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IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 











ONE OF THE HEADS FROM THE CASA DEL GOBERNADOR, UXMAL. 


[See p. 246 


IN AN UNKNOWN 
LAND 


By 


THOMAS GANN 


J.P., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. 
Member of the Maya Society 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1924 


Be 
“i, SES ee 





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E AND PRINTED IN 


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1924 
GREAT BR 


SOUTHAMPTON TIMES LTD., SOU 





§ 












CONTENTS 


PAGE 
CHAPTER I.—Arrival in Belize—Population of the Colony—Belize 


Market—Belize founded by Buccaneers—Efforts made by 
Spaniards to eject them unavailing—Battle of St. George’s 
Cay—The “‘ Poke and Go Boys ’’—Celebrations of the An- 
niversary of the Battle in Belize—Mahogany Cutters— 
Their hard Lives—Case of Piracy on the High Seas occurring 
recently inthe Caribbean . . : ; ; ° Micka 


CHAPTER II].—Leave Belize—Members of the Expedition—Arrival 
in Payo Obispo—Ashore on the Rocks—A dangerous Coast— 
Xcalac—Espiritu Santo Bay—Landing through the Mud— 
A deserted Fishing Settlement—Our first Maya Ruin—The 
East Coast Civilisation—Culebra Cays—A contented Colony— 
Ascension—Wreck of Mexican Gunboat—Vigia Chica—Arrival 
at Central—An Uncomfortable Night—-Chicleros—Santa 
Cruz Indians—They refuse to carry the Letter to their Chief— 
The Chicle Bleeder’s Life—Arrival in Santa Cruz de Bravo— 
History of the Town—lIts Abandonment by the Mexicans—Old 
Spanish Church at Santa Cruz—The Worship of the Talking 
Cross—Victims sacrificed to it—Lunch with the only Indian 
Family in the Town . : g - 4 19 


CHAPTER III.—Leave Santa Cruz—A lazy Mule—A Maya Shrine—Its 
Origin—Beliefs of the modern Indians regarding these Shrines— 
A Dance Platform—A Sunken Stone Cistern—Traces of the three 
Civilisations of Yucatan—Start for the Coast—We meet the 
Commander-in-Chief of the Santa Cruz Army—We entertain 
him and the General’s Nephew—Useful Maya Phrases—Fatal 
Complaint amongst the Indians—Description of Maya— 
Origin of the Maya—Appearance—The Women—Costume 
—The Women’s Work—Their Indifference to Money—Food— 
Traps for Game—Dangerous Hammocks—Marriage—Armlets 
worn by the Children—Drunkenness—Effects of Alcohol— 
Method of appointing Chiefs—Methods of Punishment— 
Executions—Flogging—Witchcraft—Feeble hold on Life— 
Small-pox—-Bleeding —Remedies—The Cha Chac Ceremony 36 


CHAPTER IV.—A Mad Mule—Arrival in Vigia-Boca Paila—A Sports- 
man’s Paradise—Arrival in Cozumel—Carnival Celebrations— 
The Administration—The Island of Cozumel—An Ideal Life— 
Mexican Officialsk—A Native Dance—Vino del Pais—Island 
Ladies—Savage Dogs—An ancient Church—Cortez’ Visit to 


5 


6 CONTENTS 
PAGE 
Cozumel—Vaults and Graves opened by Treasure Seekers— 
Grijalva’s Visit to Cozumel—The Buildings found there by 
Him—He takes Possession in the Name of the King of Spain— 
Sitting on a Jerisco—The Pests of Yucatan—Salubrity of the 
Island—We engage a Pilot—He knows of a hitherto unvisited 
Ruined City—Arrival off Ascension Bay—We Land to Sleep— 
Tracks in the Sand—Good Fishing and Sport—Wonderful 
Flotsam on the Beach—Discovery of the Ruined City . » 59 


CHAPTER V.—Soldier Crabs and Bats—Clearing the Bush round the 
Ruins—Hubert lives up to his Reputation—-Maya never dis- 
covered the Principle of the Arch—Description of the Temples— 

A Chacmool’s Offerings found buried beside it—Market-place 
—Curious Stucco Ornaments—Ceremonies Performed at these 
Temples—The Builders of this and other East Coast Cities . 77 


CHAPTER VI.—Maya History—lIts Sources—Methods of Reckoning 
the Passage of Time—History of the Old Empire—History of 
the New Empire—Foundation of the Various Cities in the 
Maya Area—Reasons for Maya deserting their Old Cities for 
Yucatan—Settlement of New Empire—Founding of New Cities 
—Itzamna, the Hero God—Migration from Chichen Itza to 
Champoton—Return to Chichen Itza—Entry of the Tutul Xiu 
to Yucatan—The Hero God Cuculcan—The Maya Renaissance 
—The Breaking-up of the Maya Triple Alliance—Its Cause— 
Mexican Mercenaries called into Yucatan—The Cocomes Rule in 
Yucatan for 250 Years—They are overcome by the Tutul Xiu 
—The Country is divided up into a Number of Small States 
constantly at War till the Coming of the Spaniards—Naming 
the new City Chacmool—The Period to which these Ruins 
belong—Uncomfortable Quarters—We take leave of Chacmool 89 


CHAPTER VII.—Camp out at Nohku—Arrival at Tuluum—The Town 
first sighted by Grijalva in 1518—Revisited by Stephens in 1841 
—Subsequent Visits—Reading the Date on the Stele—The 
Castillo from the Sea—Difficulties in Landing—We find no 
Trace of the Stele—Landing the Camping Outfit—We Camp 
in the Castillo—Description of the Castillo—An Uncomfortable 
Night—We Find the Stele—Description of the Sculpture on 
the Stele—Maya Chronology . : ; : , « tog 


CHAPTER VIII.—Possible Explanations of the Initial Series Date on 
the Stele—The Mystery Solved—The Wall encircling the City 
Watch-towers—Use of Walled Cities—Impossibility of Starv- 
ing the Garrison of the City—Discovery of New Buildings 
within the Walls—Types of Buildings Found—Stucco Figures— 
Mexican, Maya, and Christian Religions—Mural Paintings— 
The Only Calendar Hieroglyph found at Tuluum—Resemblance 
of the Figures of the Gods on the Stucco to those of the 


CONTENTS 4 


PAGE 
Dresden Codex—Destruction by the Spaniards of the Maya 


Books—Origin of the Dresden Codex—Gods worshipped at 
Tuluum—Tuluum and Chacmool Compared—Human Sacrifice 
—Non-arrival of Desiderio Cochua—Silence of the Ruins— 
Reflections on Tuluum : . : : ‘ ‘ » 120 


CHAPTER IX.—Landing at Playa Carmen—Primitive People—Bar- 
tering with the Indians—Uselessness of Money—Tobacco 
Curing—Temples of the Tuluum Period—Visiting the Sick— 
Aguilar, the first European to visit Yucatan—Treatment of the 
First Spanish Visitors by the Natives—Aguilar’s Ransom by 
Cortez—His Opportunities of Learning the Manners and 
Customs of the Natives—Puerto Morelos—A once thriving 
Settlement gone to Decay—lIsla de las Mujeres—Origin of the 
Name—Monotonous Life of the Islanders—Fish Plentiful— 
Drifting Sand—Reception by the Municipality—An Excellent 
Dinner—Ruins on the South End of the Island—A Great 
Kitchen Midden of the Ancients—Ill-luck Attending those who 
Meddle with the Possessions of the Ancient Inhabitants—A 
Miraculous Cross—Treasure Formerly Buried in the Islands of 
the Caribbean—Island of Cancuen—Set out in Search of Ruins 
Recently Brought to Light—The Ancient King of Cancuen and 
his Palace—Other Buildings at Cancuen—Buildings neither 
Fortified nor Centralised—No Mention of Cancuen by Early 
Historians—Ruins of El Meco—Unusual Isolation—The 
Original Temple added to at Later Dates—An Uncomfortable 
Night : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ : . ; » 53s 


CHAPTER X.—Arrival at Boca Iglesias—Difficulty in Starting Up the 
Boca—Stuck in.the Mud—An old Church—Curious Offerings 
on the Altar—Reflections on the Deserted Church—Probable 
Date of the Church—Reason for Its Isolated Situation—Cape 
Catoche and the Island of Holbox—Arrival at Yalahau—-We 
Sleep on Board—A Former Pirates’ Stronghold—An Old Stone 
Fort built to Subdue Piracy—Arrival at Cerro Cuyo—Differ- 
ence between the North and East of Yucatan—We reach Silan 
—Set out on a Mule Special for the Interior—A Yucatecan 
Ranch—Difficulty in Hiring a Tramvia—The Town of Silan 
—Its Resemblance to an Irish Village, in the Suburbs— 
Gigantic Mound in the Town—The Spaniards driven out of 
Chichen Itza took refuge here in 1531—Ancient Stele from the 
Mound now set up in the Cabildo Wall—Calendar Round Date 
on the Stele—Stele Built into Church Wall—It had contained 
an Initial Series Date—The Pirate Laffite buried at Silan— 
A Maya Tombstone from the Old Church—Difficulty in getting 
Refreshments—We meet Members of the Municipalidad—An 
Expensive Meal . . ° ° ° . . - 156 


8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XI.—Arrival at Progreso—English and Americans popular 


in Yucatan—We are Relieved of our Arms—High Cost of 
Living and Service—Inflated Wages—Resemblance of Merida to 
Monte Carlo—Mass no Longer Celebrated in the Churches— 
Palace of Francisco Montejo—Sculptured Fagade all the Work 
of Native Artists—Damage Done in Cathedral by Mexican 
Federal Troops—Flower Decorated Plaza Chief Rendezvous 
—Boot Cleaning—Reason for Few Entertainments being Given 
by Meridanos to Foreigners—Caste Barriers being Broken 
Down—Mestizas Formerly Compelled to Wear Special Dress— 
Native Dress of Men and Women—High Prices—No Alcohol on 
Sale—An Unfortunate Incident—Meridanos All Speak Maya, 
and many English—The Governor of Yucatan—A Successful 
Administration—Sefior Don Juan Martinez, an Accomplished 
Maya Scholar—Guardians of the Ruins—Land Barons of 
Yucatan, their Recent Rapid Enrichment-—Molina Solis, the 
Historian—Early Start of Trains from Merida—dArrival in 
Dzibalché—Hiring a Fotingo—Ranch of San Luis—Decline of 
Cattle Ranches in Yucatan—A Bad Road for Motoring— 
Arrival at the Ruins of Dzibalche—Descriptions of the Temples 
—Undecipherable Inscriptions—The Initial Series Inscription 
—The Date Recorded by it is the Latest of all Long Count 
Inscriptions—Historically not Improbable . . ° ; 





CHAPTER XII.—Inconvenience of Sleeping in a Liquor Store even 


when Closed—Natives Turn Night Into Day—Superiority of 
Yucatan Women of the Bourgeois Class to the Men Exemplified 
in our Hostess—Heavy Municipal Taxation—No Curas in the 
Villages Now—An Officious Jefe—Arrival in Campeche—The 
Hotel Guatemoc, Formerly the Governor’s Palace—Campeche, 
Formerly a Prosperous City, now suffering from Dry Rot— 
Great Wall Surrounding the City—Two Fine Old Churches— 
Trouble in Clearing from and Entering Mexican Ports—Port of 
Campeche Silting Up—We leave Campeche—An Unfortunate 
Accident—Arrival at Champoton—Rumour of German Wire- 
less—Archeological Interest of Champoton—Strangers in 
Town—A Terrible Trek Across the Peninsula from East to West 
—The Campo Santo—Champoton a Decaying Town—Dif- 
ference between Yucatecan and Campechano—We Leave 
Champoton—Seiba Playa—Return to Merida—Difficulty in Ob- 
taining Old Books in Merida dealing with Yucatan—Set out 
for Xcanchacan—A Light-hearted Crowd of Natives—A Vast 
Ranch—Absolute Power of the Owner over his Servants— 
Indian Girls at Xcanchacan—Henequen Cultivation and Pre- 
paration of the Fibre—Stele with Important Katun Date at the 
Rancho—Arrival .at the Ruined City of Mayapan—Primitive 


PAGE 


171 


CONTENTS : 9 


PAGE 
Means of Drawing Water—Destruction of Mayapan and 


Slaughter of the Cocomes—Some of the Reigning a 
Probably Escaped . , . . : : : 190 


CHAPTER XIII.—Return to Merida—Set Out for Dzitas—Travelling 
by Volan Coche and on Horseback—First View of the Ruins of 
Chichen Itza—The Casa Principal and its Legend of Buried 
Treasure—Attacked by Marching Army of Ants—The Monjas 
said to have been used as a Nunnery by the Maya—The 
Iglesia—Tradition that Maya came originally from India— 
The Akatzib—The Caracol—The Chichanchob, or Red House 
—The High Priest’s Grave—Inscription Giving the Date of 
Its Erection—Burial Chambers found within it—Probably 
a Royal Mausoleum—tThe Ball Court—Temples at each end of 
it—Curious Acoustic Properties—Herrera’s Account of the 
Aztec Game of Ball—Fragments of Incense Burners found 
amongst Débris of Ball Court of Much Later Date—The Temple 
of the Jaguars—The Serpent God—Painted Sculpture— 
Paintings on Stucco—The Castillo—Description of the Temple 
Wanton Damage to Wood Carving—Temples of Owl and 
Phalli, Old Chichen Itza . : ‘ ; : ‘ si: 207 


CHAPTER XIV.—The Cenote of Sacrifice—A Weird Pool—The Most 
Sacred Spot in Yucatan—Sacrifice to the Rain God of Young 
Girls—Wonderful Treasure Recovered from the Cenote, with 
Skeletons of Girls—Objects Found—Wide Distribution Geo- 
graphically of Art Treasures—Sacrificial ‘‘ Killing’”’ of Objects 
before Throwing in the Cenote—First Historical Account of 
the Ruins—Montejo’s Ill-fated Occupation of Chichen Itza— 
The Spaniards Escape by a Ruse—The Temple of the Initial 
Series—The Chacmool Temple—The Temple of the Atlantean 
Figures—The Temple of Two Lintels and its Date—The Temple 
of the Owl and its Date-—-Dated Buildings Found Covering the 
Three Periodsofthe City . ‘ . ‘ ‘ * x 222 


CHAPTER XV.—We return to Dzitas—Unsuccessful Effort to Stop 
Réveillé by Indian Performers—An Accommodating Judge— 
Similarity of the Yucatecans to the Irish—Arrival at Ticul— 
An Uncomfortable Night—The Cave of Loltun—Petroglyphs— 
Water Receptacles—The Only Date found in the Cave—Tra- 
dition Amongst the Indians in Connection with the Cave—The 
Ranch of Tabi—Hospitably Entertained—A Luxurious Ranch— 
An Equine Battle Royal—A Curious Stele showing traces of 
Spanish Influence—The Inscription Undecipherable—A Bad 
Road—Santa Ana—Great Pyramid at Kabah—Great Numbers 
of Ruined Buildings throughout Yucatan—Other Buildings at 
Kabah—Glyphs which we Could Not Read—A Triumphal Arch 
—A Stone-faced Terrace; Buildings on It—Removal of 


Io 


CONTENTS 


Sapodilla Beams Leads to the Fall of the Buildings—Removal of 
Sculptured Lintel to New York and Its Destruction— 
Sculptured Door Jambs—Disappointed In Not Finding a Date 
in the City—Pleasant City to Visit—Scarcity of Water—Source 
of Water Supply of Ancient Inhabitants . ‘ ‘ . 


CHAPTER XVI.—Visit to Uxmal, the City of the Tutul Xiu—The Casa 


del Gobernador—We Take Up our Abode on the Uppermost 
Terrace—A Romantic Spot—Mausoleum of the former Kings 
of Uxmal—Graffiti on one of the Walls—Removal of the 
Sapodilla Lintels from the Casa del Gobernador—The House 
of the Dwarf—Uxmal Visited by Padre Cogolludo—The Ruins 
Still Venerated by Modern Indians—Casa de las Monjas— 
Description of the Building—Inscription in One of the Rooms 
—Painted and Dated Capstone—Other Capstones on which 
We Could Not Read the Dates—Stele with Time Count 
Engraved upon It—The Ball Court—Inscribed Rings—Pro- 
bably Record the Shifting of the Month Coefficient by One 
Day—Accounts of the Unhealthiness of the Ruins Not Justified 
—Held’s Unpleasant Job of Copying the Capstones—Visit from 
Indian Pilgrims—Two Pretty Girls—An Aboriginal American 
Royal Family—End of our Work in Yucatan—What We had 
Accomplished During the Trip . : . . : . 


PAGE 


231 


244 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


ONE OF THE HEADS FROM THE CASA DEL GOBERNADOR, 


UXMAL ; : ‘ : ? : : . Frontispiece 
Facinc PAGE 
SKETCH Map oF YUCATAN i 4 A : » : “warts 
MARKET PLACE, BELIZE . ° . : . . . . 14 
HUBERT’S PASSPORT . : : : ; : “ . ; 14 
INDIAN CHIEF WITH GENERAL SOLIS . 2 ‘ ‘ : - 20 
VARIOUS AVATERS OF GEORGE . ; : ; ‘ . j 20 
SANTA CRUZ DE BRAvo: OLp CHURCH. : : : ‘ ». 32 
BACALAR : CHURCH WHERE MASSACRES TOOK PLACE ‘ : SJ at ee 
BACALAR CHURCH INTERIOR . : : . : : pais. | 
INCENSE BURNER  . é p é H . ir ° o 4d 
MaAyA INDIAN CHILDREN . : d ° ; . ° - 84 
PRIEST BEFORE ALTAR IN CHA CHAC CEREMONY . : : Bua ee 
SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL, FROM THE SEA . . : . . a) oo 
CHACMOOL: PLAN OF MAIN GRouP OF RUINS . ° ; ey ees 
CHACMOOL : FACADE OF TEMPLE “‘ C,’’ AND PARTOF TEMPLE’ D” . 80 
THE CHACMOOL ‘ é : : : < : A oe 
THE CHACMOOL IN SITU WITHIN A LITTLE TEMPLE IN LINE OF 
APPROACH TO CHIEF TEMPLE . 3 : ‘ » : ‘ 82 
PLAN OF PRINCIPAL GROUP AT TULUUM . - ; ‘ ° =. Fie 
TuLuuM : TEMPLE WITH RoOFCoMB  . : - “ ; » 220 
MONTHS OF THE MAYA YEAR ‘ ‘ “ ; dj ; TC Teae 
DAyYs OF THE MAYA YEAR . ri : : A ; : a) 4X2 
TULUUM . ‘ , , ‘ é 5 ; > s i - 330) 
TuLUUM : TW0-STORIED BUILDING ; : , ; «| £26 
TULUUM : SEATED FIGURE OF GOD . : F P A ~ 396 
Au PuCcH, THE GOD OF DEATH . : ; P ‘ $ » x28 
THE Gops CUCULCAN AND ITZAMNA , ; < : > ee 
PLAYA CARMEN : BARTERING WITH INHABITANTS . : ‘ - 144 
IsLA DE MUJERES: REMAINS OF TEMPLE ., : . : - 144 
SILAN, BROKEN STELE P ‘ ° ° ° . ‘ » 166 


II 


IZ 


MESTIZA, 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


GIRL OF MERIDA . < ‘ ‘ ‘ 


TEMPLE OF INITIAL SERIES, HOLACTUN : ; 


HoLactun : LOWER PART OF SERIES WITH CARVED LINTEL 


HoOLACTUN : FIGURE ON DOORWAY i . : 


INITIAL SERIES AT HOLACTUN i s - ; 


PLAN OF RUINS OF CHICHEN ITZA A > be 


MAYAPAN : 


OR 1438 A.D. » : ; . ‘ . 


CHICHEN ITzA: LINTEL IN WATER TROUGH ~ 


THE Monjas, ORHOUSEOFTHENUNS . 4 : 


CHICHANCHOB, OR RED HOUSE . : ' * 


SERPENT COLUMNS BY RUINED STAIRWAY . ss 


XCANCHACAN STELA SHOWING DATE KATUN I0 


HicH Priest’s GRAVE, COLUMN SHOWING INSCRIPTION . 


SERPENT COLUMN ON HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE . 


INDIAN STANDING IN RUINED SANCTUARY . 


THE BALL CourRT, CHICHEN ITZA ‘ ; . 


CASA DEL TIGRE, OR TRIANGLE OF THE JAGUARS . 


CHICHEN ITzA : CASTILLO FROM THE WEST . - 


INSCRIPTION ON INITIAL SERIES LINTEL ‘ ‘ 
CHACMOOL STATUE, CHICHEN ITZA m : ; 


UXMAL: 


HOUSE OF THE ADIVINO i a . 


CHICHEN ITzA : TEXT FROM PRIEST’S GRAVE “ 


CHICHEN ITzA: TRIANGLE OF THE Two LINTELS . 


STONE ALTARS ON ATLANTEAN COLUMNS ' ‘ 


STELE REPRESENTING NATIVES CARRYING DEER . 


KABAH : 
KABAH : 
KABAH: 
UXMAL: 
UXMAL: 
UXMAL: 


ENTRANCE TO OUR SITTING-ROOM . . 
FACADE WITH FACES OF THE LONG-NOSED 
FACADE OF ONE OF THE MAIN TEMPLES . 
WEsT RANGE OF MONJAS . ‘ ¢ 
Monjas ; . : ‘ , 
INSCRIPTION, DATES, GRAFFITI : F 


Facinc PaGE 


166 
184 
184 
186 
186 
202 


202 
208 
208 
212 
214 
214 
216 
216 
218 
218 
220 
220 
226 
226 
228 
228 
230 
230 
240 
240 
244 
244 
244 
248 





SKETCH MAP OF YUCATAN, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL 
TOWNS AND RUINED SITES VISITED. 


ft.) (BELIZE 15. ISLA DE LAS MUJERES 
2. .COROZAL I6. BOCA DE IGLESIAS 
3. BACALAR 17,, \MOLEBOXMISEAND. 
4. PAYO OBISPO 18. YALAHAU 

SK CALAG TO.) SILAN 

6. PUNTA HERRERA 20. PROGRESO 

7, ESPIRITU SANTO BAY 21. CAMPECHE 

8. CHACMOOL 22. CHAMPOTON 

9. CAYO CULEBRA 23. MAYAPAN 

IO. ASCENSION BAY  (24e. CHICHEN (IZA 
II. CENTRAL 25. UXMAL 

A, IDET 26. KABAH 

I3. SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL 27. CAVE. OF LOLTUN 
I4. CANCUEN ISLAND 28. MERIDA 


29. HOLACTUN 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


CHAPTER I 


Arrival in Belize—Population of the Colony—Belize Market—Belize 
founded by Buccaneers—Efforts made by Spaniards to eject them 
unavailing—Battle of St. George’s Cay—The ‘‘ Poke and Go Boys ’”’ 
—Celebrations of the Anniversary of the Battle in Belize—Mahogany 
Cutters—Their hard Lives—Case of Piracy on the High Seas occurring 
recently in the Caribbean. 


For several years Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley, of the Carnegie 
Institution, and myself had contemplated an expedition to the 
East Coast of Yucatan, one of the least known and most in- 
accessible parts of Central America, and the last place on the 
American continent where the poor remnant of the great 
Maya race, whose civilisation was the most ancient and highly 
developed in the New World 1,500 years before the coming of 
Europeans, still holds its own, unconquered and unsubdued, 
in the dense, impenetrable forests of the interior. 

Belize, the capital of British Honduras ever since the 
early forties, when John L. Stephens set forth from here on 
his celebrated search for a Central American Government, 
has been the jumping-off place of nearly all archeological 
and exploratory expeditions into Central America, being a 
good place to outfit in, and conveniently situated for all the 
Central American republics, as filibusters, gun-runners, and 
refugees, from their interminable revolutions are well aware. 
Here, then, we found ourselves early in January, with at 
least four months of assured dry weather in front of us before 
the rainy season set in which renders travelling through the 
bush practically impossible. 

The population of Belize is an extraordinarily mixed one. 
English, Spanish, French, German, and representatives of 
nearly every nation in Europe rub shoulders with Chinese, 
East Indians, and other Asiatics, while the indigenous 

13 


14 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


population is represented by negroes, Caribs, Maya, 
and Quiché Indians from the far interior, and the extra- 
ordinarily mongrel races which inhabit Southern Mexico and 
the five republics of Central America. The scene at the 
market each morning is an extremely lively and animated 
one. Everyone comes down about six to buy the day’s 
provisions. Burly negresses, in spotless white, their heads 
wrapped in gay cotton handkerchiefs, their vast feet thrust 
into still vaster unlaced boots belonging to their husbands, 
clump happily along, screaming, laughing, and chattering 
like a flock of parroquets, and chaffering over the price 
of their fresh fish and plantains. Saturnine Spaniards 
and Mexicans, thin, yellow, and cigarette-pickled, laying 
in supplies of frijoles, chili pepper, garlic, and corn cake ; 
coolies, shining and odoriferous from their morning rub- 
down with coco-nut oil, purchase rice, oil, and fish; coal- 
black Caribs, their faces and hands covered with white, 
leprous-looking patches, who, notwithstanding constant 
sea baths, always retain an unpleasant mousey smell, seek 
their daily rations of fish and cassava bread, and even an 
occasional pale-faced, starchily-clad English housewife may 
be encountered, cool, business-like, and unhurried amidst 
all the excitement. They form a shouting, gesticulating, 
chaffering, laughing, quarrelling, noisy throng, their skins 
varying from lightest olive through snuff and butter and 
café-au-lait to coal-black, their bright-coloured clothes 
making a constantly changing kaleidoscope around the 
market square. 

Belize was founded in the early part of the seventeenth 
century by English and Scotch Buccaneers, who for many 
years had driven a thriving trade along the coast in robbing 
Spanish vessels laden with logwood. Finding at length that 
the supply of victims was beginning to run short, and that 
it was really easier to cut logwood for themselves in the 
neighbourhood of Belize, where it grew in practically in- 
exhaustible quantities along the river banks, they formed a 
settlement for this purpose, and imported a number of 


61 ‘d] 


14 


‘LNOdassvd §$,1NadOH 


[p 


ELIZE. 


a 
R.A 


. Luke, 


S 


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By H 


THE, MARKET’ PLACE 








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i ee ee 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 15 


African slaves, who worked for them. Repeated efforts 
were made by the Spaniards to eject these hardy settlers 
from their territory, but without avail, till early in the last 
century a large Armada was collected by the Spanish 
Governor of Yucatan at Bacalar and despatched south to St. 
George’s Cay, a sandy island about nine miles from the 
mainland, and at that time the capital of the colony. The 
inhabitants got wind of this invasion, and, collecting their 
slaves and servants and every crazy old canoe, dug-out, and 
sailing vessel they could muster, gave battle valiantly to 
the much superior force of the invaders. 

The slaves were armed for the most part only with palm- 
stick lances hardened in the fire and sharpened, but they 
rendered such a good account of themselves with their 
primitive weapons, that after several hours fighting the 
Spaniards had had enough of it, and, getting on board such 
vessels as were still left them, turned tail, and retreated 
north again, never to return. The natives were christened, 
from their method of fighting at this battle, the ‘‘ Poke and 
Go Boys’’—a term which has clung to them ever since, 
though some etymologists have recently promulgated the 
~ theory that the name was derived from the rations supplied 
to the slaves, and should be “ Pork and Dough Boys.” 

Every year, on the anniversary of the battle of St. George’s 
Cay, the event is celebrated with music, dancing, fireworks, 
and processions of mahogany and logwood cutters through 
the streets, dressed in their ancient costume of red flannel 
cap, blue jersey, white trousers, moccasins, and machete, or 
cutlass, and carrying axe, lance, or paddle, symbols of their 
occupation, during the procession. An endless ditty, 
composed by some local poet, of which a single verse is here 
given, is chanted to the tune of ‘ Villikins and his Dinah.”’ 


We jooked them and we poked them and we drove them like fleas, 
Right into salt water right up to their knees, 

And each greasy Spaniard to the other did say: 

O vamonos compadres de St. George’s Cay. 

(O campadres, let us get out of St. George’s Cay.) 


16 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


The descendants of these same black slaves, who fought 
side by side with their owners at St. George’s Cay, form 
to-day the backbone of British Honduras, and probably 
one of the finest coloured citizenry in the world, black and 
white respecting each other, and working amicably hand in 
hand for the advancement of their country. 

The lot of the negro labourer is not altogether a happy 
one. In January of each year he sets forth to his mahogany, 
logwood, or chicle camp at the head waters of one of the 
numerous rivers, or buried in the recesses of the thick jungle 
which covers most of the country. Here he constructs little 
palm-leaf shacks for himself and family, and spends from 
nine to ten months in strenuous labour with axe and 
machete, felling mahogany and logwood, or bleeding chicle 
(chewing-gum, the sap of the sapote tree), living on a diet 
of straight flour dough and salt pork, supplemented only 
by such game as his gun can obtain in the neighbouring 
bush, or coarse fish from the streams. No wonder that 
during the month or six weeks he spends at Belize at Christ- 
mas he endeavours to make up for lost time by a too 
strenuous devotion to pleasure, chiefly represented by the 
flowing bowl, and that when the time comes for him to start 
off into the bush again he is as often as not without 
sufficient cash from his advance to buy even the cooking- 
pots and clothes absolutely essential for a nine months’ 
sojourn in the woods, perhaps one hundred miles from 
civilisation. 

The matrimonial bond is worn lightly by the mahogany 
cutter. Marriage is not infrequent, but perhaps more as an 
excuse for the spree which the wedding entails than with 
any idea of forming a permanent bond, and the lady, if 
she finds her partner unsatisfactory, thinks nothing of 
accompanying some other man into the bush on the follow- 
ing season, so that it is not infrequent to find women with 
families each member of which is by a different husband. 

The small settler in the colony has an easy time of it ; he 
is troubled neither by the housing problem nor by the 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 17 


H.C.L., as he can put up quite a comfortable thatched 
shack in a couple of days on a five-acre tract purchased 
from the Government at two dollars per acre. He will find 
his building materials—palm leaf for roof, pimento for walls, 
and sapodilla for posts—within a hundred yards of his 
future front door, and on this fertile soil he will have no 
difficulty in raising as many plantains, bananas, yams, and 
as much corn as he wants, while chickens, eggs, and pigs 
provide means of obtaining what luxuries he may desire in 
the form of clothes, rum, and tobacco. 

That piracy as a profession is not quite dead along the 
shores of the Caribbean Sea, even in the twentieth century 
is shown by the following incident. A short time ago a 
small sailing vessel set out from Belize for La Ceiba, a port 
in Spanish Honduras, with a coloured captain and crew 
and several passengers, amongst whom were two Belize 
negroes. The captain had very imprudently let it be known 
that he was carrying a considerable sum in silver dollars, 
of which the two negroes determined to possess themselves. 
When well out at sea they coolly took possession of the 
vessel, after shooting the captain and several of the other 
men and throwing their corpses overboard. Amongst the 
passengers was a Carib woman, whom they neglected to 
shoot and threw overboard alive, either because they felt 
some compunction at shooting a woman, or more probably 
because, being several miles from land in the midst of 
shark-infested waters at the time, they felt that such an 
act would be merely a waste of ammunition. This, however, 
proved to be a fatal oversight on their part, as the Caribs 
are wonderful swimmers, and as much at home in the 
water as on land, and with the aid of a piece of floating 
wood, which she fortunately encountered, the woman 
made her way safely ashore, landing on the coast of British 
Honduras, and, proceeding promptly to Belize, reported 
the matter to the authorities. 

In the meantime the vessel had reached her port in 


Spanish Honduras safely, and the two negroes not only got 
BL 


18 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


away safely with the silver dollars, but actually succeeded 
in selling the vessel herself and her cargo. Considering 
themselves now quite safe, and never dreaming that the 
Carib woman could have escaped, they coolly made their 
way back to Belize, where they were greatly surprised at 
being arrested on a charge of “‘ piracy on the high seas ’”— 
probably the first occasion upon which such a charge had 
been preferred in the colony. The case aroused a great 
deal of interest amongst all classes, and the police were 
indefatigable in collecting evidence for the prosecution, 
with the result that, after a long and careful trial, the two 
men were found guilty, as charged, by a jury of their country- 
men, and were sentenced to death, which sentence was 
promptly carried out in the Belize gaol. 


CHAPTER II 


Leave Belize—Members of the Expedition—Arrival in Payo Obispo— 
Ashore on the Rocks—A dangerous Coast—Xcalac—Espiritu Santo 
Bay—Landing through the Mud—A deserted Fishing Settlement— 
Our first Maya Ruin—The East Coast Civilisation—Culebra Cays— 
A contented Colony—Ascension—Wreck of Mexican Gunboat— 
Vigia Chica—Arrival at Central—An Uncomfortable Night—Chicleros 
—Santa Cruz Indians—They refuse to carry the Letter to their Chief 
—The Chicle Bleeder’s Life—Arrival in Santa Cruz de Bravo— 
History of the Town—Its Abandonment by the Mexicans—Old 
Spanish Church at Santa Cruz—The Worship of the Talking Cross— 
Victims sacrificed to it—Lunch with the only Indian family in the 
Town. 

WE left Belize on February 2nd in the Government yacht 
Patricia, which had been kindly lent us by H. E. the 
Governor for our trip to Corozal, where we were to pick up 
our own boat, the Lilian Y, a 22-ton sloop with 36 h.p. 
auxiliary engine, which had been despatched with pro- 
visions for our trip, instruments, photographic material, 
etc., the previous day, in charge of my factotum, Amado 
Esquivel, generally known as “‘ Muddy.” At the last moment 
on the somwehat negative recommendation of Muddy that 
he had “ never been in gaol in Belize,”” we engaged as cook a 
youth named Hubert, a procedure which we never ceased to 
regret during the whole trip. As no photograph of him 
was available, Held sketched him in profile on the blank 
space left on the passport for the photograph, which satisfied 
everyone but Hubert himself, who said there was “ too 
much lip about it to please him.” 

The trip to Corozal was devoid of incident. Morley 
endeavoured to improve the occasion—and his Spanish— 
by translating English proverbs into his own language for 
a Spanish gentleman to whom we had given passage. “* El 
gusano tempano coje el pajaro”’—‘ The early maggot 

19 


20 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


catches the bird ’’—one I happened to overhear, seemed a 
doubtful recommendation for early rising. 

We spent the night at Corozal, the northernmost town of 
British Honduras, and next morning it was “‘all aboard the 
Iilian Y.” The party consisted of Sylvanus G. Morley, 
of the Carnegie Institution; John Held, artist ; myself; 
Captain Usher ; ‘‘ Muddy ” ; Hubert ; George—an immense 
negro from the Bay Islands, always cheerful, grinning, and 
ready for work ; a colourless old negro supposed to be cook 
for the crew, but whose only function appeared to be keeping 
the stove from falling overboard in heavy weather ; Alfredo, 
our Honduranian engineer; and “‘ Boy ’’—a negro youth 
from Belize, making his first voyage, ostensibly as oiler to 
Alfredo, though, as far as we could observe, he never did 
a stroke of work during the entire voyage, but lay about 
on deck, getting dirtier and dirtier—for we had no rain— 
and fatter and fatter, till his only pair of pants, splitting 
from stem to stern under the strain, became so indecent a 
spectacle that whenever we touched at any port he had to 
be segregated in the engine-room. 

We arrived at Payo Obispo, capital of the Mexican 
territory of Quintana Roo, next morning, and were very 
hospitably received by General Octaviano Solis, Governor 
of the territory, a veteran of thirty-three or thereabouts, 
who had risen in and through the revolution. Morley and 
Held were persuaded to stop over a couple of days, giving 
and receiving dinners, dances, and suppers, punctuated at 
frequent intervals by liquid refreshments. I, however, 
having experienced twenty years of the lavish hospitality 
of Spanish America, fled in the Lilian Y the same evening, 
arranging to join them at Xcalac, which they could reach 
in a few hours by crossing the peninsula separating Payo 
Obispo from the east coast of Yucatan. 

I spread my mattress on deck that night to get the most 
of what little air was stirring, as the cabin was hot and stuffy, 
and, anyway, a 5ft. roin. bunk offers no real hope of comfort 
to a 6ft. individual. About midnight I was roused by 





Sel Ger ey a) 


SUHLVAV SNOTYVA 


oz ‘d} 


‘XHW ‘OOM VNVLNING JO NONUAAOD 
‘STTOS IVUANAD HLIM AIH NVIGNI ZOO VINVS 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND aI 


George singing. Standing—or rather crouching—on top 
of the wheel, the spokes of which he grasped with his pre- 
hensible toes, and leaning up against the after house, he 
reminded one of a great black ape. His voice was a squeaky 
tenor, and sounded curious coming from such a gigantic 
individual, but every now and then the bottom seemed to 
drop out of it, and it became a hoarse bass. I listened for 
nearly an hour to an apparently inexhaustible repertoire, 
catching such fragments as, ‘‘ Oh, where shall ah be when de 
las psalm is sung?” ‘“ Lard, ef yo doan hep me doan hep 
de grizzlen bar,’”’ and ‘“‘ Kiss me, kiss me.””’ Anyone glimps- 
ing George’s kissing apparatus will notice that he should be 
an adept in the art. 

I was aroused about 3 a.m. by a grinding shock, and 
found that we had run aground on the rocks off Blacadores 
Cay. A stiff breeze was blowing, and the Lilian Y was 
endeavouring to rip her bottom out on the reef. Ridge 
after ridge the staunch old tub scraped over, till at last we 
arrived in deep water, and anchored till daylight. The 
accident had been caused by George’s taking us several 
miles out of our course, and it was unanimously decided 
that in future steering should be done in the usual manner, 
and without musical accompaniment. 

About Io a.m. we ran in through the opening in the reef 
and anchored off San Pedro, the chief settlement of 
Yucatecans and Indians on Ambergris Cay. The people 
here are all fishermen, coco-nut growers, and chicle, or chew- 
ing gum, bleeders. 

We landed for a bath, breakfast, and arun ashore. Dur- 
ing the latter, however, a strong north-east wind set in, 
and we found ourselves in the same position as two small 
sugar freighters, bound to Progreso with sugar from Guate- 
mala, who had been held up here unable to pass the opening 
in the reef for four days. The entire east coast of Yucatan — 
is a nightmare to the small sailing craft which trade along 
it, as in a strong east or north-east wind they have to run 
behind the reef for safety, where they may be bottled up 


22 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


for a week, or even longer, waiting for the weather to 
moderate. 

Next morning, the wind having died down somewhat, 
we set sail, and with the assistance of our 36 h.p. engine 
negotiated the opening in the reef safely, and found our- 
selves in the open sea again. Holding a course due north 
along a low, barren, sandy coast, about midday we sighted 
Xcalac. A brisk north-eastern was blowing, piling up a 
ribbon of white surf on the reef, which here and along the 
whole east coast of Yucatan runs parallel with the shore, 
hugging it closely in some places, in others retiring a mile or 
more out tosea. We made for a break in the surf line which 
looked like a passage through the reef, only to discover, 
just in time to sheer off, that it was one of those deceptive 
false openings where, the water being a little deeper than 
on other parts of the reef, the surf does not show up so con- 
spicuously. This nearly proved the end of our trip before it 
had well begun, as we missed the jaws of the reef by feet, 
and had the Lilian Y grounded she would very soon have 
had the bottom torn out of her on the sharp coral fangs, with 
the heavy sea then running. 

Morley and Held turned up in Xcalac within an hour of 
my arrival. They were accompanied by two members of 
the Governor’s staff to speed the parting guests, and showed 
distinct signs of wear and tear, bringing with them 
tales of a truly gorgeous time and most flattering letters 
of recommendation to all officials in the territory, 
advising them to give the expedition every assistance in 
their power. 

Xcalac is a miserable little isolated place, perched in the 
centre of an inaccessible stretch of barren sandy shore. Its 
population consists exclusively of Mexican soldiers, sailors 
and officials, the dull monotony of whose life is only broken 
by the arrival of a gunboat from Vera Cruz, bringing fresh 
troops for the territory. Like all settlements on the east 
coast, it has never recovered from the hurricane and tidal 
wave of the previous year, which simply wiped out the houses 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 23 


and shipping, and tore great barrancas through the site 
occupied by the town. 

From Xcalac we ran north all night, arriving at five next 
morning in front of the opening to Espiritu Santo Bay. At 
Punta Herrera is a small lighthouse, where we put ashore, 
and secured one of the light keepers as a pilot for the bay. 
It is a desolate waste of grey water, running some twenty 
miles inland, whose western limits have never been thorough- 
ly explored. The shores, flat, barren, swampy, are entirely 
uninhabited, and covered with mangrove, salt water 
pimento, and low wiry scrub, while the water shoals off to 
aft. or less a mile from the beach. By means of the pram— 
an invaluable little boat, which without her Evinrude engine 
did not draw over 6in., and was absolutely impossible to 
upset in any sea—we reached the eastern shore, where we 
found ourselves separated from the land by 100 yds. of evil 
looking grey ooze. Muddy, stripped to his shirt, waded 
laboriously ashore through this, which reached well above 
his knees. Morley—always to the fore in adventures, great 
and small—next essayed the trip. He had forgotten, however 
that the soles of Muddy’s feet were calloused by many years 
of shoelessness, and on planting his own tender sole full on a 
sharp point of rock, with which the bottom of the mud was 
liberally supplied, he endeavoured to shift the weight to the 
- other foot, which, however, encountered an even sharper 
tooth. It is not an easy matter to change one’s footing 
rapidly when sunk in two feet of mud, and the performance 
ended in a series of spasmodic jerks, a shower of mud, 
collapse, and a shirt much in need of washing. Held 
and I from front seats in the pram enjoyed the show 
immensely, and, profiting by the experience, waded 
slowly ashore with the aid of a stick, never lifting one foot 
till the other had found at least a tolerably smooth 
resting-place. 

We slept that night on the veranda of the lighthouse, and 
early next morning set out in the pram with the lighthouse 
keeper to find a ruin, said to exist somewhere on the south 


24 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


coast of the bay. We passed innumerable sandy and 
swampy islands, on one of which we discovered an old 
fishermen’s camp, consisting of a few primitive palm-leaf 
huts—or, rather, conical hut roofs, for they were wall-less— 
a well of brackish water dug in the sand, and a crawl, or 
small enclosure of sticks, built in the sea a few yards from 
the shore, in which the turtle captured may be kept alive 
till enough have accumulated to make it worth while sending 
them to Belize or the nearest market. 

After nearly two hours’ passage along tortuous channels 
separating mangrove-covered mud swamps, disturbing in our 
course thousands of water fowl of all kinds, including the 
beautiful white egret—whose time, however, had not yet 
arrived, for it is only during the breeding season that he is 
shot for his plumes—we arrived at a small rocky island 
covered with almost impenetrable low scrub, near the centre 
of which we came upon our ruin. It was a small sanctuary, 
or altar, built of stone and tough mortar, 8ft. square and 5ft. 
high. The roof and upper part had fallenin. In front was 
a small door, and in the back wall a square window. The 
building was covered with eight layers of stucco super- 
imposed one on the other, each of which had been decorated 
in red, yellow, blue, and black. On the front, to the right 
of the door, were the imprints of four red hands, so commonly 
found on all the buildings of this region. They were made 
by dipping the hands in red paint, and applying them to 
the surface to be marked, and may have been the builders’ 
sign manual. Indeed, so clear are they on some interior 
walls that the maker might still be identified, if in the flesh, 
by his finger-prints. 

The ruin is known to the Indians as Canché Balaam, or 
Tiger’s Seat, which is probably its original name, handed 
down from the ancient Maya. It is an insignificant little 
place, but of interest to us as the first building of this kind 
we had seen on our trip. Later we were to become well 
acquainted with the type, which we named the Tuluum style, 
from the remarkable conformity of all the examples with 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 25 


the architecture of Tuluum, presently to be described, 
which was evidently the capital city of this east 
coast civilisation. The solitary little shrine is apparently 
the southern-most outpost of this civilisation, as to 
the south and west of it quite a different type of 
ruin is found, representing a much earlier period of the 
Maya civilization. 

These east coast buildings, whether single or in large 
or small groups, exhibit certain characteristics in common 
which distinguish them from both earlier and later Maya 
architecture. The masonry is crude and rough, and covered 
both internally and externally by layers of smooth, hard 
stucco, which nearly always show traces of painted designs. 
The main entrances of temples and palaces are usually 
supported on one or more circular stone columns, above 
which are lintels of sapodilla wood, often still 7m situ, hardly 
altered by their five hundred years of weathering. The 
fagades are frequently decorated by figures of gods and 
geometrical devices moulded in exceedingly hard stucco. 
Stone altars, or shrines, such as that just described, are of 
frequent occurrence all over the area, and at the larger 
sites ruins are found of extensive flat-roofed, arcade-like 
buildings, standing on terraced, stone-faced mounds, and 
supported by rows of great round stone columns, which were 
probably used as market-places. 

The east coast culture was the dying effort of the great 
Maya civilisation, and was most probably the work of 
refugees from Northern Yucatan after the conquest of 
Mayapan about A.D. 1450, which finally destroyed all central 
authority amongst the Maya. Thewhole country was divided 
into a number of small provinces, each under its own 
cacique, or ruler, allin a constant state of warfare with 
each other, up to the arrival of the Spaniards a century 
later, whose conquest of Yucatan, as of Mexico, was greatly 
facilitated by the internecine strife of the natives. This 
lonely, deserted-little shrine, looking out over a vast stretch 
of grey sea and desolate, uninhabited country, last decadent 


26 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


effort of a once great civilisation, appealed somehow more 
strongly to our imagination than any of the ruined cities 
which we later discovered. 

Leaving Espiritu Santo at 1.30 p.m., we arrived about 
5.30 at Culebra Cays, a group of mangrove islands lying 
right in the mouth of Ascension Bay. We landed at the 
easternmost island, where, on a small spit of sand, the only 
solid spot in the mangrove swamp, we found a curious bee- 
hive-shaped hut built of palm leaves, occupied by five 
ancient mariners, inhabitants of the island of San Pedro, 
who came here every year for some months during the 
turtle and barracouda fishing season. Wooden frameworks 
covered with drying fish, and a crawl well filled with green 
or edible turtle a few yards off shore, showed that their 
efforts had not been unsuccessful. Hundreds of yards of 
seine net were hung out to dry, while dozens of the little 
cedar models of turtles, used as net-floats and decoys for 
the precious “‘ Caray,’’ or tortoiseshell turtle, strewed the 
beach. These old fellows, friends of many years’ standing, 
were all married, but liked to get away from their families and 
have a good time together, camping out here on the bay for 
six months or so every year, fishing and hunting, and all 
agreed that the procedure greatly enhanced the joys of 
matrimony. Their life seemed an ideal one. All they 
brought with them was corn, tobacco, and coffee, the sea 
and the bush supplying every other need, even to the 
material for their house, while the constant sea breeze kept 
off mosquitoes and sand flies, which are at times such a 
pest on the mainland. We offered them whisky and 
cigars. The latter each accepted, but refused the former, 
all being total abstainers, except the youngest of the party, 
a youth of perhaps sixty, who said it was so long since he 
had had a drink that it was hardly worth acquiring the taste 
again as he would have no means of gratifying it after we had 
gone. 

Next morning we bade good-bye with real regret to our 
venerable hosts, sorry that, driven by the exigencies of a 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 27 


long route and limited time, we could not give their simple 
life a longer trial. 

A few hours later we reached Ascension, a little settlement 
perched on a sandbank bounding the northern shore of 
Ascension Bay. A few years ago it was the headquarters 
of the Mexican troops sent to subdue the Santa Cruz Indians, 
and a place of considerable importance, with a fine pier 
and many large buildings. Like all other east coast settle- 
ments, however, it was practically wiped out by the cyclone, 
and all that remains of its former glory is the gaunt skeleton 
of the pier and a few ruined buildings. A celador, or minor 
Custom’s official, resides here, after reporting to whom 
we set out for Vigia Chica, higher up the bay, our next port 
of call, passing on the way the rusting wreck of the old 
Mexican gunboat Independencia, once a participator in the 
Mexican campaign against the Santa Cruz Indians, now— 
fit symbol of that campaign—ending her days stuck in 
the mud opposite the scene of her former activities, 
like the soldiers she carried, slowly becoming an 
integral part of the soil of the country she was sent to 
conquer. 

Vigia Chica, once the port of the flourishing city of Santa 
Cruz de Bravo, and terminal of the National Railroad of 
Quintana Roo, a 55-kilometre line joining the latter with 
Santa Cruz, is now little more than a depressing dump of 
ruined houses, wharf, and rolling-stock. Of all places on 
the coast it suffered most severely from the cyclone, the 
houses being flattened out, while the surface of the stone 
wharf, with the iron rails and rolling-stock, was literally 
skimmed off and dumped in the sea alongside. A Mexican 
lieutenant and a dozen soldiers are all that remain of the 
once large garrison, while the civil population is represented 
by a few depressed chicle bleeders and contractors, whose 
business it is to get out as much of the precious chewing gum 
as they can from the hinterland, which is in the territory 
of the Santa Cruz Indians. 

Mule-drawn flat cars still run between Vigia Chica and 


28 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Santa Cruz, chiefly for the purpose of taking in chicle 
bleeders and their supplies, and bringing out chewing gum. 
Two of them, with the necessary mules, were kindly lent us 
by the lieutenant and Messrs. Martin & Martinez, chicle 
bleeders operating in the interior, and on these we set out 
for Santa Cruz about 2 p.m. On reaching Kilometre 9 
from Virgia everyone had to get off, and with the assistance 
of the mules carry all the luggage over to Kilometre II, 
where two fresh cars awaited us, as the rails had 
been torn up across this interval to prevent the 
Santa Cruz Indians making sudden incursions upon the town. 

At dusk we arrived at Central, thirty-four kilometres from 
Vigia Chica, formerly a considerable military depdt, the 
only relic of which is a large tin-roofed house, the former 
cuartel, or barracks, now used by Messrs. Martin & Martinez 
as quarters for their chicleros. These chicleros, recruited 
from the scum of the Mexican peonage, are probably the 
dirtiest people on earth, and as the cwartel was crowded 
with them and a large pack of their mangy dogs, I erected 
my folding cot and mosquito curtain on one of the flat cars, 
which I had pushed about half a mile up the line in order to 
escape what might be termed the odoriferous zone which 
surrounded the house. Unfortunately, in the early hours 
of the morning it came on to pour with rain, and I had to 
make a break for the house in a tangle of mosquito curtains 
and blankets, arriving wet through. I found Muddy and 
Held sitting sadly and wakefully in chairs. The former, 
who had tried to woo sleep on a blanket in the hall, said he 
had at last got tired of picking dog fleas off himself, while 
Held every time he dozed off had been awakened by the 
incursion into his room of some picturesque brigand 
apparently in the last stages of consumption—a fairly apt 
description, for chicleros in their immense wide-brimmed 
conical hats, machetes, revolvers, bandoliers, cotton shirt 
and trousers, red blankets and sandals, are certainly 
picturesque, and all keep up a constant staccato coughing 
and expectoration upon the floor, while wandering about 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 29 


at intervals during the night smoking innumerable 
cigarettes. 

Next morning we found a small party of Santa Cruz 
Indians had arrived during the night with a letter from their 
chief, General Mai, for Mr. Martin. They are small brown 
men, shy, uncommunicative, and rather anxious-looking, 
dressed in short bell-shaped trousers, shirtlike coats of 
cotton, palm-leaf hats and sandals, all of native manufacture. 
We were exceedingly anxious to meet their chief, as we 
wished to obtain from him guides and an escort to extensive 
ruins in the interior of his territory, never before visited by 
Europeans. The Indians, however, refused to carry a 
letter to the chief. Neither money nor argument—the 
latter perhaps not very lucid, as they could only understand 
Maya—moved them, their contention being that the chief 
had given them a letter to deliver, which they had accom- 
plished, but had said nothing about bringing a letter back, 
and if they exceeded their instructions by doing this they 
might on their return be macheted—or chopped to death 
by a machete—and would undoubtedly be flogged. We 
pointed out, however, that if they refused our request we 
should certainly inform the chief of their discourtesy when 
we met him. This opened up an unpleasant probability 
of punishment whatever course they took, and proved so 
disconcerting that while we were at breakfast the whole 
party decamped incontinently into the bush, and we saw 
them no more. 

The place was full of sullen, swarthy, unclean Mexican 
chicleros, who, now that the season was over, and chicle 
would no longer run from incisions in the bark, had several 
months of enforced leisure to look forward to, though in 
order to keep his working force together the employer is 
obliged to feed them, and even advance them money on 
account of next year’s work. 

The chicle bleeder’s is a hard life, and only the toughest 
element of a pretty tough population will sign on for it. 
It necessitates living all through the rainy season in the 


30 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


heart of the virgin bush, soaked by day and crowded into 
dirty palm-leaf shelters by night, with poor and insufficient 
food. The work, which consists in climbing the sapodilla 
trees and cutting spiral grooves in the bark, along which the 
sap runs out, to be caught in receptacles at the base of the 
tree, is not devoid of danger, and many accidents from falls, 
cuts, and snake bites occur where the patients are separated 
from the nearest doctor by one hundred miles or more of 
virgin forest. 

The easiest part of the work is boiling down the semi- 
liquid sap in great iron kettles, to drive off the water, till 
it becomes a tough, plastic solid, which is put up in oblong 
blocks, which are carried on mule back to the nearest river 
or port. In purchasing these blocks, “‘ Caveat emptor”’ is 
the motto of the employer, for the ingenuous chiclero 
frequently inserts a core of wood bark, or even dirt, and 
sometimes the block consists of a mere skin of chicle, enclos- 
ing a core of judiciously weighted alien material. 

Later in the day we started on a mule-drawn plataforma, 
or flat car, for Santa Cruz de Bravo. On reaching Kilometre 
48 we found the line torn up, and walked on to 49, where we 
expected to find another car ready to take us on to Santa 
Cruz. This, however, owing to some misunderstanding, had 
not been provided, and we were obliged to walk the seven 
kilometres into Santa Cruz over a very bad and muddy 
path. 

The town of Santa Cruz has a curious history. Founded, 
as indicated by the old church, towards the end of the 
sixteenth century by the Spanish conquistadores of Yucatan, 
it appears to have led the placid, uneventful life of a Spanish 
provincial town up to the year 1848, when in the general 
uprising of the Maya Indians, driven to desperation by the 
cruelty and oppression of their Spanish masters, the inhabit- 
ants were all either massacred or driven out. From 1848 
to 1902 the town was occupied by the Maya, but in the 
latter year was reconquered by General Bravo on behalf 
of the Mexican Government. General Bravo renamed the 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 31 


town Santa Cruz de Bravo, built the railroad over which 
we had just come to the town from the port of Vigia Chica, 
projected railroads to Payo Obispo in the south and Merida 
in the north, imported large numbers of convicts for forced 
work from Mexico, held out every inducement to merchants 
and settlers, and actually succeeded in creating within a 
few years a prosperous Mexican town of 4,000 or so 
inhabitants in the heart of the mid-Yucatecan wilderness. 
The Indians, however, though driven into the fastnesses 
of the bush, never ceased a guerilla warfare against the 
garrison and inhabitants. Whenever they encountered a 
party of soldiers or civilians in the bush, not too formidable 
to be dealt with, they promptly chopped them to pieces, 
and on one occasion, on securing a corporal and three 
soldiers, tied them securely in a little palm-leaf house, 
saturated them with kerosene, and set fire to the house. 
The Mexicans, on their side, whenever they came across an 
Indian settlement in the bush promptly wiped out the 
inhabitants and destroyed their corn plantations. Not- 
withstanding the fact that the bush had been cleared for 
two or three hundred metres on either side of the railroad, 
the Indians constantly attacked the trains, massacring 
soldiers and civilians and looting baggage. Finding at last 
that the land in the vicinity was of little agricultural value, 
that the town itself was cut off from communication with 
other places on all sides by dense bush, and that the Indians 
were a constant menace, the Mexicans determined to 
abandon the town and hand it over again to the Santa Cruz 
Indians, though its acquisition had cost them rivers of 
blood and millions of dollars. 

The following year this abandonment was effected ; 
soldiers, convicts, and civilians were withdrawn, and, 
scattering over various parts of the Republic, left the town 
without a single inhabitant. 

It was in this town, abandoned for over a year, that we now 
arrived. The wooden houses, some of them really magnifi- 
cent structures, were falling into decay, the streets and the 


32 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


beautiful little plaza (with its stone fountains, promenades, 
and seats, surrounded by an orange grove) were choked with 
bush and weeds, the fountains were dry and filled with 
leaves, and the town was occupied by a single family of 
Santa Cruz Indians, who had taken up their abode in a two 
roomed mud-floored shack, though they might have occupied 
the Governor’s palace, and were gradually pulling down the 
wooden houses to use the lumber as firewood. The fine 
old sixteenth century Spanish church was the only building 
which stood forth unaltered among the ruins of the modern 
gingerbread Mexican city ; it is 105 ft. by 36 ft., and 80 ft. 
high, with massive walls 8 ft. thick. During the Maya occupa- 
tion of the city it was the centre of that remarkable religious 
cult, the worship of the Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross, from 
which the Santa Cruz Indians derive their name. Between 
the expulsion of the Spaniards by the Indians and the 
conquest of the latter by the Mexicans in 1902 no priest 
of any denomination was permitted to enter the Santa Cruz 
country. The Indians, however, appointed priests from 
among their own number, who carried out a sort of travesty 
of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, freely inter- 
spersed with those of their ancient religion. The head- 
quarters of the cult was at the capital, and centred round 
what was known as the Santa Cruz, a plain wooden cross 
some two to three feet high, probably removed from some 
church after the expulsion of the Spaniards. It was gifted 
with the power of speech—probably owing to the ventri- 
loquial power of one of the priests—and acted as an oracle, 
to whom all matters of importance, civil, military, or 
religious, were referred. It need hardly be said that the 
cross never failed to return an answer to any of these 
questions in entire conformity with the wishes of the 
chief, 

In 1859 a mission was despatched by the Superintendent 
of British Honduras to the chiefs of the Santa Cruz Indians, 
with the object of endeavouring to rescue some Spanish 
prisoners held by them. One of the members of the 





SANTA CRUZ DE BRAVO: OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
- 
LP. 32 





BACALAR : RUINS OF THE OLD CHURCH WHERE THE MASSACRES 
OF SPANIARDS TOOK PLACE BY THE SANTA CRUZ INDIANS. 


Ip. 34 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 33 


expedition, in a manuscript account left of its failure, 
says : 


“ That night all the available Indians arrived in front 
of the house where the Santa Cruz is kept. The boy 
attendants, or sentries of the idol, called “ angels,’’ with 
the subordinate chiefs and soldiers, knelt outside, and 
did not rise till the service was over, when they crossed 
themselves, and rubbed their foreheads in the dust. 
About 11 o'clock the Indians were heard running back- 
ward and forward, and an order was given to bring out 
the prisoners, who were placed in a line before the Santa 
Cruz, and a large body of soldiers was placed with them. 
They all knelt down in the road. There were about 
forty female prisoners with one arm tied to the side, and 
twelve or fourteen men pinioned by both arms. All were 
calm except the children, although it was known that 
Santa Cruz was pronouncing their doom. A squeaking, 
whistling noise was heard proceeding from the oracle, 
and when it ceased it was known that the Santa Cruz 
wanted a higher ransom for prisoners.”’ 


This, apparently, was not forthcoming, for later the 
chronicler says : 


‘““ Some of the women and children were separated from 
the rest, amongst whom was a young Spanish girl well 
known in high circles. A procession was then formed, 
and marched off to the east gate; first came a strong 
body of troops, and then alternately, in Indian file, a 
male prisoner and his executioner, who drove him on 
with his machete, holding him by arope. Next came the 
women, thirty-five in number, driven and held in a similar 
manner ; then another body of soldiers closed the rear. 
The Englishmen were not allowed to follow. The pro- 


cession halted under a clump of trees about 150 yds. off 
CL 


34. IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Soon the butchery commenced and shrieks were heard, 
but in ten minutes all was over. 

“The Santa Cruz was mixed up with some Catholic 
rites, but retains the leading characteristics of the god, 
who was best propitiated by placing bleeding human 
hearts within his lips.” 


As we contemplated this solid, ugly old church, still 
standing square and uncompromising amidst the surround- 
ing ruin and desolation, we could not help thinking, if an 
aura of the human emotions experienced within them clings 
to buildings, what a black cloud of misery and despair must 
environ and fill it ; first of victims of the Holy Office under 
the Spanish occupation; later of unfortunate wretches 
brought for the judgment upon them of the Santa Cruz, 
which almost invariably in its squeaking whisper condemned 
them to death by machetazos, or being chopped in pieces by 
a machete ; and last, and perhaps worst, of the miserable 
prisoners under the Mexican occupation, when the church 
was used as a gaol, and hundreds of prisoners were crowded 
promiscuously into the nave—men, women, and children— 
with the offscourings of the criminal population from Mexico 
City, locked in together at night. Free fights were common, 
and often wound-covered corpses were removed in the 
morning, while filth, vermin, and immorality were rampant 
always. 

With these thoughts running through our minds we 
entered the lofty nave, silent, gloomy, acrid with the smell 
of bats, dank and cold by contrast with the warm sun outside. 
We did not remain long, however, but, chilled and depressed, 
soon made for the open air again, and hunted up the single 
Indian family left in charge of the deserted city. None of 
them could understand a word of any language but Maya. 
Our wants, however, were easily indicated—food, plenty of 
it, and right away. We were soon provided with a sort of 
omelette made from eggs and tiny round tomatoes fried 
together, with plenty of tortillas, or corn cake, and sacha, 


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IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 35 


a very unattractive drink made from ground corn and water. 
The tomatoes were delicious, and sweet as sugar, though it 
was not till later that we discovered the plants from which 
they came climbing luxuriantly over the graves in the 
churchyard. 


CHAPTER III 


Leave Santa Cruz—A lazy Mule—A Maya Shrine—Its Origin—Beliefs 
of the modern Indians regarding these Shrines—A Dance Platform— 
A Sunken Stone Cistern—Traces of the three Civilisations of Yucatan— 
Start for the Coast—We meet the Commander-in-Chief of the Santa 
Cruz Army—wWe entertain him and the General’s Nephew—Useful 
Maya Phrases—Fatal Complaint amongst the Indians—Description 
of Maya—Origin of the Maya—Appearance—The Women—Costume 
—The Women’s Work—Their Indifference to Money—Food—Traps for 
Game—Dangerous Hammocks—Marriage—Armlets worn by the 
Children—Drunkenness—Effects of Alcohol—Method of appointing 
Chiefs—Methods of Punishment—Executions—Flogging—Witchcraft 
—Feeble hold on Life—Smallpox—Bleeding—Remedies—The Cha 
Chac Ceremony. 


WE left Santa Cruz without regret, and were agreeably 
surprised to find a flataforma awaiting us at the railhead. 
Harnessed to it, however, was a gaunt mule ominously 
named “‘ Floja’’ (lazy)—a name which her conduct did 
not belie, for never at any stage of the journey could we get 
more than three miles an hour out of her, though the driver 
tried every device known to muleteers, pulling the car up 
by the traces so that its front edge caught her hind legs, 
which manceuvre she lazily met by trotting a few paces to 
escape the car, and when she felt the-strain on the traces 
aiming a murderous flying kick at the driver over the top 
of the car during the manceuvre. We coaxed her with 
sticks, stones, and even scraps of burning palm leaf, while 
the driver, after cursing her by all the saints in the calendar 
without avail, tried carivo, or soft sawder, calling her 
“Chula Mula,’ ‘‘ Dulce corazon’’ (sweetheart), “Multa 
bonita’’ (pretty little lady mule), till at last, hoarse and 
tired, even he resigned himself to the inevitable. 

While we plodded slowly along, Don Julio Martin told 


us of a graveyard where were situated some old tombs, a 
36 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 37 


few miles outside Central, and next morning early we set 
out to visit them. 

After retracing our route of the previous day for a few 
miles up the tram-line, we turned off into a milpa, or maize 
plantation, where we found a number of small tumuli, built 
of earth and large boulders, probably burial mounds of the 
ancient Maya. Passing through this, we soon entered the 
forest, and after a quarter of an hour’s walk came upon 
the first “tomb,” which proved to be a little two-storied 
Maya shrine, standing upon a stone platform 2oft. by 15ft. 
It was constructed of roughly squared stones held together 
by very tough mortar. The upper story was 3ft. 4in. 
high, 4ft. long, and 3ft. Ioin. broad, and possessed a single 
small doorway facing due west ; the lower was 6ft. gin. long 
and 6ft. 4in. broad, and had doorways in all four walls, over 
each of which were oblong recesses 5in. deep. 





Small Maya Shrine. 


The figure shows the ground plan of the building, with a 
median core or column of masonry passing up through its 
centre, and rounded interior angles, leaving a narrow oval 
passage into which opened a small doorway on each side 
of the building. The whole structure was covered through- 
out with hard, smooth stucco, which at the bottom of the 
recesses above the doorway, where it had been protected 
from the weather, still showed traces of red, black, and white 
pigments. 

Don Julio informed us that some years ago this little 
shrine was surmounted by a stone cross about 2ft. 6in. in 
height, which had been thrown down and smashed in pieces 
by the Mexican soldiers stationed at Central, to whom the 
sight of a cross is as ared rag toa bull. His story was pro- 
bably true, as on the roof of the upper storey we found a 


38 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


depression surrounded by cement, evidently made to support 
a square column. 

This opens up a very interesting problem: was the 
building erected by the Maya, after they had become 
Christianised, as a shrine, such as one sees at the stations 
of the cross which surround many modern Indian villages, 
their old style of architecture remaining unaltered, except 
by the addition of a cross ; was it erected in pre-Columbian 
days, and later adapted to Christian uses; or was it (as 
Don Julio supposed) a tomb built over one of their chiefs 
who had embraced Christianity? Interesting but unfor- 
tunately futile speculations, which can now probably never 
be answered. 

The Santa Cruz Indians, degenerate, traditionless descend- 
ants of the ancient Maya, call these shrines “ Kahtal alux,” 
“houses of the little people.”” All through this territory 
are found in considerable numbers large pottery incense 
burners, upon the outside of which are sculptured in high 
relief human figures, two to three feet high, covered by a 
wealth of ornament and decoration. The Indians firmly 
believe that at night these figures come to life, leave the 
vases to which they are attached, and visit these little houses, 
the scene of their former life, returning by day to lifeless 
pottery. There were four more of these shrines scattered 
through the bush within a radius of half a mile, all replicas 
of the one described, but none in quite such a perfect state 
of preservation. 

Returning to Central, we passed a dance platform built of 
stone, with flat, cement-covered top, 274ft. long by 16ft. 
broad, and 34ft. high. These platforms are found at even 
the smallest ancient Maya sites, and were used by the people 
for ceremonial dances and dramatic entertainments, of 
which they were inordinately fond, for, according to the 
ancient chroniclers, the Maya of Yucatan were at the time 
of the conquest at once the gayest and most pleasure-loving 
people, and the most fettered by religious observance, 
possible to conceive 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 39 


Close to the platform we came across a stone-faced pond, 
or cistern, 30ft. in diameter, still containing good drinking 
water, though much silted up with the mud and the vegetal 
accumulation of several centuries. These sunken stone-lined 
cisterns are fairly common in this part of Yucatan, and 
probably form the solution of the problem of how the former 
inhabitants obtained their water-supply in a country void 
of rivers and springs, where for four months in the year it 
hardly rains at all. 

Within twenty-four hours we had been brought in 
contact with relics of the three civilisations which during 
the last thirteen centuries had dominated Yucatan—the 
Maya represented, by the shrines, the dance platform, and 
the cistern, lasting from the sixth to the sixteenth century ; 
the Spanish represented by the old church at Santa Cruz, 
from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth ; and the Mexican, 
represented by the ruined city of Santa Cruz, from the end 
of the Spanish occupation to the present day. While the 
works of the Maya and Spanish architects stand to-day almost 
untouched by the hand of time, practically in the same 
condition as on the day when they were first completed, 
the meretricious remains of the modern civilisation, though 
only deserted for a few years, are rapidly falling into decay, 
and in but a few more years will have disappeared com- 
pletely—streets and plazas, private houses and _ public 
buildings, stucco and woodwork—before the all-devouring 
bush, leaving no smallest trace of their existence. 

The same afternoon we started back from Central for 
the coast in a single flat car, seven of us perched insecurely 
and uncomfortably on top of our mountains of impedimenta. 
Five kilometres from Central two Indians dodged out of a 
little bush path on to the track, and on coming up with them 
we were delighted to find that they were First Captain 
Desiderio Cochua, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of 
General Mai, the head chief of all the Santa Cruz Indians, 
together with the General’s nephew, a precocious youth 
whom I had encountered before, when he formed one of a 


40 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


deputation sent to interview the Governor of British 
Honduras on behalf of the Santa Cruz Indians. Their 
clothes gave no indication of their high rank, consisting 
merely of sandals, straw hats, loose, shirt-like cotton coats 
and bell-shaped trousers rolled up to the knee, while their 
modest luggage, consisting of a hammock and roll of foto- 
poste (large, hard, thin corn cakes, specially made to carry 
on a journey) slung in a net over the shoulders by a strap 
passing round the forehead, put our own vast carload of 
bags, boxes, suit-cases, pots, pans, firearms, canned goods, 
wraps, etc., completely to shame. We all got off the car, 
and, sitting on the railroad embankment, formed ourselves 
into an entertainment committee for the two Indians with 
the help of Scotch whisky and cigars for the Captain, and 
chocolate creams and cigarettes for the boy, to the accom- 
paniment of American ragtime on the horrible, cheap little 
gramophone, the delight of Morley’s heart, which ac- 
companied us on all our travels by land or sea. 

The Captain spoke only his native language, so our sobs 
means of communication with him was through Muddy, 
my knowledge of Maya being Ollendorfian, and confined to 
such useful commercial phrases as: ‘‘ Yan tech ha, he, chicken 
caax, wmixua’’—‘‘ Have you any water, eggs, chickens, 
corn cake?” and “ Bahux takin hakatiola ?’’—“ How 
much do you want for them?” with “‘ Tech hach kichpan 
Xchupal’’—“ You are a very pretty girl’—‘ Tzaten, 
tzetic, tzutz’’—‘‘ Will you give me a kiss? ’’—for social 
small coin. 

The Captain informed us that he was going to Central 
to transact some business for the chief, who was laid up 
with whooping cough in a village a couple of days’ journey 
offin the bush. Whooping cough, like measles, mumps, and 
scarlatina, is an extremely fatal complaint amongst the 
Indians, to whom it is a comparatively new disease, against 
which the immunity acquired after centuries by European 
has not yet come as a protection. He was very friendly 
and cordial, expressing unbounded admiration for the 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND AI 


English—amongst whom Morley, notwithstanding his New 
England accent, was included—and promised that if he 
could possibly manage it he would meet us with a guard a 
week from the following Sunday, and take us to a ruined 
city behind Tuluum, far larger, finer, and in better preserva- 
tion than the latter ; in any case, if he could not turn up, he 
promised that the chief should send messages to the head 
man at Acumal, the nearest village to Tuluum on the coast, 
instructing him to have guides ready to take us to the ruins. 
We were greatly elated at these promises, as no European 
had ever been permitted by the Indians to approach these 
ruins, rumours of whose good state of preservation and extent 
had already reached us. Unfortunately, as it turned out, 
we were not to visit them on this occasion, as, though we 
waited three days at Tuluum for Desiderio, he did not turn 
up, being detained at Central, and on reaching Acumal we 
were unable to get the Lilian Y in through the opening in 
the reef, which is here very narrow. Our visit, however, is 
only postponed, not abandoned. 

Before leaving them for good some description of the 
Santa Cruz Indians, with whom we had probably come in 
closer contact in this and former expeditions than any other 
Europeans, may prove of interest. They are the last in- 
dependent tribe of aboriginal Indians in Central America, 
and are probably the purest representatives of that great 
Maya race, written records of whose civilisation have been 
found antedating the Christian era. The territory at pre- 
sent occupied by them reaches from Acumal, in the north 
of Yucatan, to the head of the Bacalar Lagoon in the south, 
a distance of approximately 200 kilometres, extending 
inland for about 70 kilometres. They are the direct de- 
scendants of those Maya who, about the middle of the 
fifteenth century, after the fall of Mayapan, emigrated to 
the east coast of Yucatan, and founded what may be called 
the east coast civilisation, whose ruins it was our object on 
- this trip to explore. 

Physically these Indians, though short, are robust and 


42 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


well-proportioned, the men averaging 5ft. 2in. to 5ft. 3in. 
in height—the women perhaps a couple of inches less. The 
hair in both sexes is long, coarse, black, and luxuriant on 
the head, but absent on other parts of the body. The 
complexion varies from nearly white to chocolate colour, 
the skull is very broad, the features and extremities small 
and finely modelled, and the eyes large, dark brown, and 
(except in the younger girls, where they are sometimes 
languishing, but more frequently mischievous) sad, or 
merely bovine in expression. The teeth are beautiful, but 
in middle life get worn down very much from constantly 
eating corn cake impregnated with grit from the rubbing- 
stone—indeed, they say themselves that every old man or 
woman eats a rubbing-stone and three bvazos (the stone 
with which the corn is ground) in the course of their lives. 
Many of the younger women are extremely handsome, 
measured even by the most exacting standard, though they 
reach maturity at a very early age, and when a European 
woman would hardly have begun to show the ravages of 
time they are wrinkled hags. Bow-legs (xkulok) are usually 
common amongst them, due probably to the fact that the 
children from the time they can toddle are taught to carry 
the macapal, a netted bag slung from the forehead, resting 
on the shoulders, and not (as the early chroniclers supposed) 
because they were carried as infants riding astride their 
mother’s hip. The constant carrying of a macapal has 
given them a curious and characteristic gait—the upper 
part of the body bent forwards, eyes on the ground, toes 
turned in—and so used have they become to it that often 
on going a journey with no luggage to carry they put a few 
stones in the macapal to act as a counterpoise. 

Nearly all the Santa Cruz have a peculiar faint, not un- 
pleasant odour, somewhat suggestive of peat smoke, and 
not affected by washing. It rather reminds one of the peaty 
smell of the West of Ireland peasant, and, like this, is no 
doubt due to frequent exposure to wood smoke in the 
chimneyless room. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 43 


The women are much superior in looks and physique to 
the men, and when got up in gala costume they present a 
very attractive appearance, with exquisitely embroidered 
white cotton Awipil (a loose, sleeveless garment cut very low 
at the neck and back, closely resembling the feminine 
evening dress of modern civilisation, but leaving more to 
the imagination), gold chains, pendants, and earrings of 
native workmanship, and often a small coronet of fire 
beetles, resembling tiny electric lamps, in their magnificent 
hair. 

When quarrelling amongst themselves the women and 
girls use the most disgusting and obscene language, im- 
provising as they go along with remarkable quick-witted- 
ness, not bound down, like more civilised people, by stereo- 
typed forms in oath and invective, but pouring out a 
ceaseless stream of vituperation and obscenity to meet each 
case, which strikes with unerring fidelity the weak points 
morally, physically, and ancestrally in their opponents’ 
armour. They are very industrious, usually arising between 
three and four every morning to prepare the day’s supply of 
corn cake for their lord and master’s early breakfast. During 
the day they have few idle moments, as they cure tobacco, 
make cigarettes, gather cotton, which they spin and weave, 
make palm-leaf mats and liana baskets, cotton and hempen 
string, and rope hammocks, nets, and cooking and other 
utensils of pottery—in fact, every conceivable household 
article, for which her less adaptable civilised sister would 
have to send to half a dozen different stores, the Maya woman 
has to manufacture herself from such materials as the bush 
provides. Nor is she imbued with any tincture of the 
modern movement for emancipating women from the care 
of the household, for, in addition to her other multifarious 
duties, she does the family cooking and washing, and even 
helps her husband with the livestock. 

Most of these independent Indians are utterly lacking 
in any ambition to accumulate wealth. It occasionally 
happens, however, that one of them does acquire it, as in 


44 | IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the case of the Head Chief of the Icaiche Indians—neigh- 
bours of the Santa Cruz, but much more pacificos than they 
—who was paid a salary by the Mexican Government to 
keep his people quiet, in addition to royalties on chicle cut 
on his tribal lands by various contractors. He accumulated 
no less than two demijohns full of gold coin, which, having 
no wants requiring money for their satisfaction, he simply 
buried in the bush, where presumably they still remain, as 
before his death, which was sudden, and due to a growing 
unpopularity amongst his people, he neglected to confide 
the secret of their location to his family. 

The Santa Cruz’s real god is his milpa, or corn plantation, 
for he knows that if the corn crop fails from any cause actual 
starvation menaces him and his family till the next crop 
comes in. The plantation consists merely of a small clearing 
in the virgin bush, made about December. The vegetation, 
which is thoroughly dry about May, the end of the dry 
season, is then burnt, and the corn planted by making holes 
with a sharp stick in the soil at fairly regular intervals, 
dropping in a few grains of corn, covering them over, and 
leaving the rest to Providence. When the corn begins to 
ripen, about the end of October, the owner constructs a 
country residence of a couple of dozen or so large palm 
leaves in his milpa, and practically takes up his abode there 
till the crop is harvested, as deer and wild hog are ex- 
tremely fond of corn, while the pigs of neighbouring landed 
proprietors, and even the proprietors themselves, have to be 
closely guarded against. 

In the Indian menu ixim, as he calls maize, is the piéce 
de résistance. Corn cakes are prepared from it in the fol- 
lowing manner. The grain is soaked overnight in a lye of 
wood ashes, which softens the kernel and removes the outer 
husk. The softened kernel is next ground to a paste on 
a slightly concave oblong stone by means of a stone rolling- 
pin. This process takes considerable time and labour, and 
one is always awakened between 3 and 4 a.m. in an Indian 
hut by the clank, clank of the rubbing-stone, vigorously 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 45 


wielded by a half-naked woman, who literally waters the 
bread with the sweat of her brow. The mass of ground 
corn, when finished, is flattened out by hand into little 
round, thin cakes, which are baked on a pottery or iron 
disc, and must be eaten very hot—a fact which precludes 
the possibility of the whole family ever dining together, as 
the women have to keep preparing the cakes one at a time 
and handing them to the men as fast as they can prepare 
and bake them. They sit, when eating, at little round 
tables about 2ft. high on small blocks of wood. 

In addition to these cakes, they make a great variety of 
drinks from ground corn and water, flavoured with honey, 
or cacao ; one of them, known as #znol, is made from parched 
corn, and has almost exactly the colour and flavour of 
coffee, from which it is practically indistinguishable. This 
pinol, a true “ coffee substitute,’ was probably used by the 
Maya centuries before the genuine coffee-bean was em- 
ployed in the East. 

They obtain fire by means of a flint and steel, or by swiftly 
rotating a sharp-pointed shaft of hard wood—generally 
dogwood—in a hole made in a small dry slab of some very 
soft wood—usually gumbolimbo. 

A great variety of game is found in the Santa Cruz country, 
including deer, antelope, wild hog, armadillo, gibnut, wild 
turkey, quam, corrasow, quail, pigeon, and partridge. 
Besides these, iguana, woula—a large species of constrictor 
snake—and other snakes are eaten, and turtles are often 
captured along the coast and adjacent islands, while their 
eggs in the breeding season form a great delicacy for the 
Santa Cruz in the neighbourhood of Tuluum. The jaguar, 
puma, picote, monkey, tapir, and squirrel are also hunted 
from time to time for their skins or flesh. Traps of two kinds 
are in common use. One is constructed by digging a deep 
pit with outward sloping sides, the top of which is covered 
with branches, into which the animal falls and is unable to 
get out. Another, also used for catching large game, is 
constructed in the following way. A path frequented by 


46 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


game in going to and from a watering-place is found. Along 
this is dug a shallow trench opposite a good, springy young 
sapling. Two stakes are driven in, one on each side of the 
trench, the one farthest from the sapling being crooked at 
the top. A piece of hempen cord provided with a noose at 
one end, and with a stick long enough to extend from one 
stake to the other, firmly tied by its middle above the noose, 
is attached to the top of the sapling by its other end. The 
sapling is then bent down and held in place by the stick 
above the noose, which is fixed lightly between the crook 
in one stake and the stake opposite to it, the loop hanging 
suspended between the two. Lastly a number of sticks 
and leaves are scattered lightly over the trench, and beside 
the stakes and loop. An animal coming along the run is 
very apt to thrust its neck through the loop, and by pulling 
on this to release the cross stick, whereupon it is immediately 
jerked into the air by the recoil of the sapling. Animals of 
all sizes are caught in traps of this kind, the strength and 
adaptability of which vary with the size of the bent tree and 
the adjustment of the noose. 

The houses are single-roomed affairs, the wells constructed 
of tasistas, or small palm sticks, the roof of palm-leaf thatch, 
and the floor of hard earth. They contain no furniture 
beyond the family hammocks, as eating, cooking, and most 
of the important business of life is carried on in the kitchen. 
It is difficult to navigate the room without coming in contact 
with the hammocks, but these should be touched with great 
caution, as in many cases countless livestock leave the body 
of the hammock during the day, and secrete themselves 
in the knots at the junction of the body and arms, a strategic 
position for night raids and for a transfer to the garments 
of the unwary at any time. Privacy under these conditions 
is naturally impossible, but they never seem to feel the need 
of it, and in the presence of strangers, equally with their 
own men, the women and girls are quite natural and un- 
ashamed, though by no means shameless. 

Indian girls married formerly at about fourteen or fifteen 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 47 


boys at seventeen or eighteen years. After the conquest of 
Bacalar and Santa Cruz, however, and the expulsion of the 
Yucatecans from Indian territory, a law came into force 
making marriage compulsory for all girls of twelve years 
of age and upwards. This was probably done with a view 
to increasing the population, which had been considerably 
depleted by the long-continued war. One would have 
imagined that, as it was the fighting male population which 
had suffered chiefly by the war, polygamy would have been 
‘the natural remedy to suggest itself, but, curiously enough, 
this practice seems always to have been repugnant to the 
Maya, and at no time during their centuries-long history 
do we find it prevalent. Even the chiefs, kings, and 
caciques rarely indulged in more than one wife, official or 
otherwise, while the priests were not permitted to marry 
at all. 

The Maya are by no means an amorous race, notwith- 
standing the fact that at the coming of the Spaniards they 
practised certain dithyrambic dances for which the Spanish 
priests insisted on substituting the ungraceful shuffle known 
as the “ Mestisada,’’ in which the men and women prance 
solemnly and stiltedly about like marionettes in front of 
each other, without even circling or touching. I have 
frequently watched the course of young love in Maya lovers 
from genesis to consummation, but never have I been able 
to detect that longing for physical contact as experienced 
in kissing, hand holding, and waist clasping, or for psychic 
contact to the exclusion of the rest of the world, as 
expressed in glances, smiles, and unintelligible mumbles, so 
characteristic in more civilised lovers. On the contrary, 
they seem to take it all as a purely business proposition ; 
the man wants someone to help him in the house, the woman 
wants someone to provide food—and that is all there is to 
it. In one particular only do they conform to the code of 
Venus ; the mating season is almost invariably in the spring. 
Formerly amongst the Santa Cruz the first question of a 
father to his daughter’s prospective suitor was, “‘ Hz tzak 


48 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


a kul, lt tzak Taman ?’’—“ How many macates of corn 
and cotton have you?” At the present day, however, 
there are not enough men to go round, and he is glad to 
see anything in the way of a prospective son-in-law turn up. 

The babies and small children are pretty, merry little 
things, generally seen rolling or toddling about in the sun 
and dust, unclothed save for a string of beads, dried seeds, 
shells, and stone, clay or wood figures, worn round their 
necks. Many of these are worn as charms or amulets to 
protect the wearer from diseases, accidents, and evil spirits, 
and to bring good luck. A charm worn by nearly all children 
consists of a small cross of the bark of the tancasche, regarded 
as a sovereign remedy for flatulence, a complaint from 
which, owing to the nature of their diet, nearly all suffer. 
A tiny gold key is worn by unbaptised children, with which, 
should they die without baptism, they may themselves 
open the gates of paradise. 

The ancient chroniclers frequently mention the fact that, 
at the time of the Spanish conquest, drunkenness was the 
curse of the Indians, and the cause of many crimes among 
them, including murder, rape, and arson. These remarks 
apply equally well to the present day ; indeed, drunkenness 
is probably even more prevalent now than then, as the rum 
made by the Indians of to-day is far more intoxicating than 
the balché, a drink made from fermented honey, water, and 
roots, used by their ancestors. Moreover, the people drink 
rum practically whenever they can get it, whereas both the 
preparation and consumption of balché were to some extent 
ceremonial, as was the resulting intoxication. Drunkenness 
is not regarded as in any sense a disgrace, but rather as a 
beatific state, for which those who reach it are to be envied 
rather than criticised. The women, especially the older 
ones, drink a good deal, but they usually do so in the privacy 
of their own houses. I have, however, seen a little girl of 
fourteen or fifteen purchase a pint of rum in a village liquor 
shop, go out on the plaza, swallow it in a few gulps, and then, 
lying down deliberately in the hot sun, lapse into a state of 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 49 


alcoholic coma. Alcohol effects an extraordinarily rapid 
change for the worse in the Indian temperament. From 
a quiet, polite, rather servile individual, he is metamorphosed 
almost in an instant into a maudlin idiot, staggering about 
singing foolish snatches of native songs, howling, shrieking, 
and endeavouring to embrace everyone he comes in contact 
with. When thwarted while in this condition his temper 
is likely to flare up at the slightest provocation, whereupon 
the thin veneer of civilisation and restraint is sloughed in 
a moment, and he becomes savage, insolent, overbearing, 
and contemptuous towards the stranger, and ready to draw 
his machete and fight to kill, with friend or foe alike. 

On the death of a head chief of the Santa Cruz Indians 
the oldest of the sub-chiefs is supposed to succeed him ; as 
a matter of fact, there are always rival claimants for the 
chieftainship, and the sub-chief with the _ strongest 
personality or greatest popularity amongst the soldiers 
usually succeeds in grasping the office. There are nearly 
always rival factions endeavouring to oust the chief in 
power, and the latter rarely dies in his bed. The power 
of the head chief is practically unlimited over the whole 
tribe. Some time ago, when Roman Pec was head chief, 
one of the sub-chiefs came to Corozal (the nearest settlement 
to the Santa Cruz country in British Honduras) for the 
purpose of purchasing powder, shot, and other supplies. 
He remained some time, as he had many friends in the place, 
and purchased, amongst other things, a bottle of laudanum 
to relieve toothache. On returning to his village he was 
met by three soldiers, who informed him that he was to go 
at once with them to the head chief, as the latter was angry 
with him on account of his long absence from the country. 
Aware that this was equivalent to a sentence of death, he 
asked permission to retire to his home for a few minutes to 
prepare for the journey, and, taking advantage of the 
opportunity, swallowed the entire contents of the bottle 
of laudanum. This began to take effect very shortly, and, 
notwithstanding the best efforts of the soldiers, who dragged 

DL 


50 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


him along, prodding him vigorously with the points of their 
machetes, long before reaching the capital and the presence 
of the head chief he was dead. 

The method of executing those sentenced to death is 
curious. The accused does not undergo a formal trial, but 
the evidence against him is placed before the head chief ; 
if he is convicted he has an opportunity of defending himself, 
and of producing witnesses in his behalf. Three or four 
soldiers are chosen by the chief to carry out the sentence, 
which they do by chopping the victim to death with their 
machetes when they catch him asleep or off his guard. 
Several men always “execute the orders of the court,” 
all chopping the victim at the same time, so that no single 
individual may be held responsible for his death. Imprison- 
ment as a punishment for crime is unknown, fine, flogging, 
and death being the only three methods employed in dealing 
with criminals. The severity of the flogging is regulated 
by the nature of the offence, and after it is over the recipient 
is compelled publicly to express sorrow for his offence, and 
go around humbly kissing the hands of all the spectators, 
after which, by way of consolation, he is given a large 
calabash of anisado (rum with an anise flavour) to drink. 
The heaviest punishment is meted out for sorcery or witch- 
craft, as the pulya, or sorceress, is greatly dreaded by the 
Indians. She is literally chopped limb from limb, but 
whereas the bodies of other victims executed in this way 
are always buried, that of the pulya is left for the dogs and 
vultures to dispose of. 

Both men and women when attacked by any serious 
malady, are found to be lacking in stamina and vitality ; 
they relax their hold on life very easily, seeming to regard 
it as hardly worth a fight to retain. An elderly man or 
woman will sometimes take to their hammock without 
apparent physical symptoms of disease beyond the anemia 
from which nearly all suffer, and quietly announce to his 
or her relatives: “‘ He im cimli’’—“I am going to die.” 
They refuse to eat, drink, or talk, wrap themselves in a 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 51 


sheet from head to foot, and finally, in a very short time, 
do succumb, apparently from sheer distaste of life and 
absence of desire to go on living. This point of view is well 
recognised by the friends and relatives, and they rarely 
worry the patient with food, drink, medicine, or cheering 
or encouraging conversation, holding that when an indivi- 
dual is tired of life, he is, if he feels so inclined, perfectly 
at liberty to leave it. 

Smallpox, known as “ kak,” or fire, invading an Indian 
village is a terrible scourge, far worse than in a more civilised 
community of the same size, where partial immunity has 
been conferred by the presence of the disease for many 
centuries. Sometimes the whole unaffected population 
departs from the village en masse, leaving the dead unburied, 
and the stricken lying in their hammocks with a supply of 
food and water, to perish or recover unaided as best they can. 
Their treatment for this disease is similar to that employed 
by them in malaria, namely, the production of profuse 
sweating, followed by sudden immersion in cold water— 
the colder the better. It need hardly be said that the 
patient, who might have overcome the disease unaided, not 
unfrequently succumbs to the remedy. Bleeding is a very 
favourite remedy, especially for headache and any febrile 
disorder. Usually the temporal vein above and in front 
of the ear is opened, but sometimes one of the veins of the 
forearm, which has first been distended with blood by tying 
a ligature round the arm higher up. A chip of obsidian, a 
sharp splinter of bone, ora snake’s tooth serves as a lancet, 
the last being the favourite, as, though more painful than 
the other two, it is supposed to possess some esoteric virtue, 
which helps out the cure of the disease. Decoctions from 
the carcasses of dried and mummified animals form no 
inconsiderable part of the Indian pharmacopceia, certain 
animals being regarded as specifics for certain diseases, 
During an epidemic of whooping cough which I witnessed 
a decoction of the charred remains of the cane rat was 
almost exclusively given to the children to relieve the cough. 


52 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


In this case it is very hard to trace any connection between 
the remedy and the disease, but some remedies are 
undoubtedly used on the assumption that “ Similia similibus 
curantur,’’ as in the case of Xhudub pek, twin seeds closely 
resembling enlarged glands, the milky juice from which is 
regarded as specific for glandular swellings in all parts of 
the body. 

The Maya Indians are extremely superstitious, believing 
that the air is full of pishan, or souls of the dead, who are at 
liberty at all times to return to their old haunts on earth, 
and at certain seasons are compelled to do so. The pishan 
are capable of enjoying the spirit, though not the substance 
of human food, especially for some time just after they have 
left the body ; hence the provision by friends and relatives 
of food and drink for the dead, sometimes in their houses, 
sometimes on their graves. Some fishan are believed to 
be friendly to mortals, others inimical. They believe also 
in spirits known as Xtabai, who have never undergone 
incarnation on earth. These are always harmful, or at 
best mischievous, and often take the form of a beautiful 
woman, whose chief desire is to lead men astray, often 
luring the victim on into the bush with enchanting voice 
and backward glances, half disclosing her supernatural 
beauty, till he is irretrievably lost, and wanders about half 
demented to die of hunger and thirst. At other times the 
victim is allowed to overtake and grasp the beautiful Xtabai, 
but the first touch is death, consequently the cause usually 
assigned for the demise of anyone found dead on the trails, 
or in the bush, without any external marks of violence, is 
“touched by a Xtabai.”’ 

Another belief commonly held bv the Indians is that the 
images of Christian saints, like the clay images of their 
ancient gods upon the incensarios already mentioned, are 
at times endowed with life, and the powers of speech and 
locomotion, and that on these occasions they are capable 
of actively aiding their faithful devotees. A celebrated 
wooden image supposed to represent San Bernardo, was 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 53 


credited with considerable powers in this respect, and when 
an Indian wanted rain for his milpa, the return of an errant 
wife, good hunting, or any similar blessing, he would come 
and pray to the image to obtain it for him. 

On one occasion a devotee arrived from a distant village 
imploring the saint to aid him in the recovery of his pigs, 
which had been lost, and on returning to his village found 
to his joy that the pigs had arrived home before him. Next 
day he returned, with the intention of making an offering 
to the saint for his good offices, and incidentally, a present 
to the owner of the house where the saint dwelt. He found 
the poor santo much dishevelled, with torn clothes, and burrs 
and thorns sticking all over him. On enquiring how this 
had come about he was informed that the saint had been 
out in the bush hunting for pigs, a quest which had given 
him a great deal of trouble before he could find and drive 
them home, and that when he got back he was tired out, 
his face scratched, and his clothes torn by thorns and covered 
with burrs—an explanation which completely satisfied the 
Indian, and naturally called for a very handsome present 
to the saint. 

The image of San Isidro now reposing at Bacalar is even 
more celebrated. Some years ago the Santa Cruz Indians 
wished to remove the saint from his little shrine in Bacalar 
to the great church in Santa Cruz, a resting-place more in 
accord with his dignity. or this purpose he was laid in a 
hammock, and carried by relays of Indians to a swamp 
dividing the two places, where a halt was made for the night. 
Next morning, to the consternation of the bearers, the image 
of the saint was found to be missing. On returning to 
Bacalar to report the disappearance, they were overjoyed 
to find him standing as usual in his lowly shrine, crook in 
hand, halo on head, looking benevolently down on them. 
Three times in all they tried to remove him, but on each 
occasion at the night halt the saint returned to his old 
quarters at Bacalar, till they realised that he preferred his 
own shrine to the great church at Santa Cruz, and, with 


54 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


reputation greatly enhanced, he was after that left in 
peace. 

Many curious superstitions are associated with the ruins 
found throughout this country. Iwas assured by an Indian 
that he had gone on one occasion to the ruins situated near 
the village of Benque Viego, and, seeing a pigeon seated on 
a tree, raised his gun to shoot it. Before he could do so, 
however, the pigeon changed into a cock, and then almost 
instantaneously into an eagle, which flew at him and drove 
him away. 

There is a further superstition connected with these 
ruins to the effect that when the first settlers came to Benque 
Viego, they wished to build the village near the ruins, where 
plenty of cut stone is available, and land is excellent for 
corn growing. They were, however, repeatedly driven off 
by a little old man with a long grey beard, who appeared 
when anyone tried to dig a post hole on the new site, and 
whose appearance was so threatening and terrible that they 
finally gave up the idea, and contented themselves with the 
present site, which, it must be admitted, is in many ways 
inferior. 

Nominally they are Christians, but the more one sees of 
them, and the better one gets to know them, the more one 
realises that their Christianity is merely a thin veneer, and 
that fundamentally their religious conceptions, and even 
their ritual and ceremonies, are survivals—degenerate, 
much altered, and with most of their significance lost, but 
still survivals of those of their ancestors in pre-Columbian 
days. To Christianity, not as a separate faith, but as a 
welcome addition to their ancient religion, they took kindly 
from the first. The innumerable saints of the Roman 
Catholic Church were grafted on the not very extensive 
Maya pantheon, and at the present day the Sun God, the 
Wind God, the Rain God, Our Lady of Guadelupe, Saint 
Lawrence, and Santa Clara, may all be invoked in the same 
prayer, while the cross is substituted in most of the cere- 
monies for the images of the old gods, though many of the 





MAYA INDIAN CHILDREN. 


PRIEST BEFORE ALTAR IN THE CHA CHAC CEREMONY. 


Lp. 55 


p. 48 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 55 


latter are called on by name, and offerings are made to 
them. 

The Cha Chac ceremony, which we witnessed from 
beginning to end, whose object is to procure sufficient rain 
for the ripening of the corn, will be briefly described, as it 
embraces most of the offerings and procedure of all the other 
ceremonies. 

The day previous to the ceremony the men of the village 
dug the #7), or oven in which the food offerings were to be 
baked. This consisted of an oblong hole in the ground 
some 6ft. by 4ft. and 2ft. deep, filled with dry wood, on 
which were placed a number of large stones. The women 
worked hard all night at their rubbing-stones, grinding 
great quantities of masa, a thick paste of ground corn, and 
stkil, a thin paste of roast pumpkin seeds, from which their 
offerings were to be made. Early in the morning of the 
day of the ceremony the priest arrived with his assistant. 
He was a thin, solemn, ascetic individual of pure Maya 
type and evidently unmixed blood, clad in immaculate 
white cotton shirt and trousers, with sandals on his feet. 
A site was chosen in the midst of a grove of large trees, in 
which a circular space 25ft. in diameter had been completely 
cleared of trees and undergrowth. In this were erected 
two rude huts, one 12ft. the other 6ft. square, of freshly-cut 
sticks, thatched with huano leaf. In the centre of the 
larger hut was erected an altar of sticks, bound together with 
liana, and arched over with branches of the sacred shrub 
known as jabin. On the altar were placed a number of small 
calabashes for drinking from, and a cross. Beneath it in 
large gourds, were placed the corn and pumpkin seed paste 
made the night before, with a large jar of balché, the sacred 
drink of the Maya, made from fermented honey, in which 
has been steeped the bark of certain trees. The gourds of 
corn and pumpkin seed paste were next removed to the 
smaller hut, where they were dumped out on the floor, 
which had been covered with wild plantain leaves. The 
priest and his assistant soon converted the paste into cakes, 


56 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


each of which was wrapped in an outer coat of palm leaf 
and an inner jacket of wild plantain leaf, and tied up securely 
with liana. The firewood in the #70, or oven, had been 
meanwhile set light to, and the hole was now half filled 
with glowing ashes and red-hot stones, in which the leaf- 
wrapped cakes were half buried, the earth taken from the 
pib when it was dug out being raked on top of them, while 
the priest sprinkled a little balché to the four cardinal points 
with a branch of sacred jabin, repeating four times the 
prayer: “‘In kubic ti at epalob, ti noh yum kab yetel nahmetan”’ 
—‘I offer to the majestic ones, to the great Lord, cakes 
of corn.”’ 

Meanwhile a turkey and four fowls had been placed in 
front of the altar. The priest and his assistant seized the 
turkey, placed a wreath of sacred jabin leaves round its 
neck, and poured a little balché down its throat, murmuring 
meanwhile : “ In kubic t1 hahnal kichpan kolel tt San Pedro, 
San Pablo, San Franctsco.’”’—‘I1 offer a repast to the 
beautiful Virgin, to San Pedro, San Pablo, San Francisco.” 

The turkey and fowls then had their necks wrung, and 
were sent away to be cooked by the women, after which all 
returned to the #7b, which was opened up, and the red hot, 
leaf-wrapped bundles of corn bread removed to the small 
shed, where their wrappings were removed, and they were 
placed upon the altar. The fowls and turkey, roasted and 
dismembered, were also placed on the altar, together with 
a large calabash of balché, and some freshly made corn husk 
cigarettes. All the offerings to the gods were now in place— 
bread, meat, tobacco, and wine. 

The priest, standing directly in front of the altar facing 
the people sitting round in a semicircle, took some burning 
incense in a piece of plantain bark, and, waving it towards 
the four cardinal points, placed it upon the altar; next he 
took a little of the balché, and scattered some of it towards 
the north, east, and west, repeating at the same time in a 
low, solemn, droning undertone this dedicatory prayer to 
the gods to whom the offerings were made: 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 57 


“Now my beautiful lady of the yellow-leafed breadnut, 
as well as you, my handsome father, San Isidro, tiller 
of the earth ; as well as you, Lord Sun, who art seated 
in the middle of the Heavens, in the east ; as well as you, 
Yumceanchaacoob (Lord of all the Chacs) ; I deliver (these 
things) to you with the majestic servants in the middle 
of the Heavens. As well as to you, my handsome father 
Cakaal Uxmaal ; as well as you, my beautiful Lady Santa 
Clara, as well as you, my handsome father Xualakinck 
(a male wind god), as well as you, my beautiful Lady 
Xhekik (a female wind god), as well as you, my handsome 
father San Lorenzo ; as well as you, my beautiful lady 
of Guadelupe, as well as you, Lord Mosonicoob, that 
blows within the milpa when it is burnt, I deliver to you 
this holy grace that you may taste it, and because you 
are the greatest santos on earth. That is all, my masters. 
Pardon my sins. You have not to follow the holy souls, 
because I have made this holy offering.” 


After this the balché was passed round in calabashes and 
drunk by the participants, while the corn bread and fowls 
were divided up amongst them, a very insignificant portion 
of bread, meat, and balché being reserved for the women 
who were, of course, not permitted to participate in the 
ceremony, but on whom by far the most arduous part of 
the labour of preparing for it had fallen. After this the 
priest distributed the new-made corn husk cigarettes from 
the altar, and finally everything used in the ceremony 
including sheds, altar, and vessels, was burnt, and very 
carefully reduced to ashes. It is absolutely essential in 
performing the ceremony that everything employed in it 
be fresh and unused. The huts and oven are made specially 
for the occasion; the gourd cups and bowls have never 
been used before ; the pottery is new, and even the incense, 
corn husk cigarettes, and black native wax candles are 
specially prepared for the ceremony. 

After the ceremony it is equally important that everything 


58 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


employed in it be completely destroyed, generally by fire. 
The Cha Chac would appear to be primarily an offering of 
food, drink, incense, and tobacco, made to the Christian, 
santos and to their own ancient gods by the Indians, which 
after they have been presented to the gods, may be con- 
sumed by the participants in the ceremony. 

Its chief function, no doubt, was to secure the goodwill 
of the saints and gods, and so ensure a satisfactory rainfall 
during the ripening of the maize crop, but this was not its 
sole function, for by the side of the hut containing the 
principal altar was placed a small wooden table, or subsidiary 
altar, with a string of gourds, in which were placed small 
portions of food, drink, and tobacco, at the same time that 
these were placed on the large altar. The priest also made 
offerings from this small altar to the gods, which he explained 
were on behalf of the ¢twyun pishan—literally “ solitary 
souls,”’ meaning souls of the dead—who had not as yet 
reached paradise, but were wandering about the earth 
disconsolate and alone—a state obviously suggested by 
the Christian idea of purgatory. 


CHAPTER IV 


A Mad Mule—Arrival in Vigia—Boca Paila—A Sportsman’s Paradise— 
Arrival in Cozumel—Carnival Celebrations—The Administration— 
The Island of Cozumel—An Ideal Life—Mexican Officials—A Native 
Dance—Vino del Pais—Island Ladies—Savage Dogs—An ancient 
Church—Cortez’ visit to Cozumel—Vaults and Graves opened by 
Treasure Seekers—Grijalva’s visit to Cozumel—The Buildings found 
there by Him—He takes Possession in the Name of the King of Spain— 
Sitting on a Jerisco—The Pests of Yucatan—Salubrity of the Island— 
We engage a Pilot—He knows of a hitherto unvisited Ruined City— 
Arrival off Ascension Bay—We Land to Sleep—Tracks in the Sand— 
Good Fishing and Sport—Wonderful Flotsam on the Beach— 
Discovery of the Ruined City. 

ON leaving Desiderio Cochua we made an uneventful passage 

as far as the break in the railroad nearest to Vigia, and on 

portaging our luggage over this found a flat car and fresh 
mule awaiting us, the latter an evil-tempered, irritable 
animal, known as ‘“ Lunatico.’ Curiously enough, all 
the mules on this line appear to possess names descriptive 
of their most prominent characteristics. All, without 
exception, are evil, and, so far as our experience went, well 
merited. Lunatico did not take kindly to the harness, 
emphasising his disapproval directly anyone approached 
him to put it on by well-directed kicks. At last, however, 
by tying him up short and blindfolding him, we succeeded 
in getting it on, only, however, to encounter a fresh obstacle, 
as our old muleteer, known to us only as hombre—.e. ““ man ”’ 

—who was obviously suffering from a bad attack of cold 

feet, refused point blank to fasten the traces to the flat 

car, saying he felt sure the blank, blank son of ten million 

blank, blank diablos would run away, overturn the car, 

and prove his finish. A compromise was reached by his 

agreeing to give the traces one turn round a central hook 

at the front of the car, holding the end in his hand, so that 
59 


60 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


any moment he might, so to speak, slip his cable, the reins 
meanwhile being handed over to a compadre. 

We galloped along in fine style for a mile or two, for 
Lunatico, whatever his other faults, had not a lazy hair 
on his carcass. Suddenly, however, for no apparent reason 
beyond justifying his name, he took it into his head to bolt, 
on which poor old hombre completely lost his head, loosed 
the traces, while compadre let go the reins, and we were left 
gazing at the gradually diminishing back view of Lunatico 
disappearing down the line, a tangle of ropes trailing behind 
him. 

Meanwhile our flat car, its momentum exhausted, soon 
came to a stop, and we found ourselves marooned in the 
middle of a swamp, eight kilometres from anywhere, night 
coming on rapidly, and battalions of mosquitoes concentrat- 
ing for the assault. Disgustedly we drove hombre and his 
compadre off down the line, in the faint hope that the mule 
might have got hitched up by the traces or reins, failing 
which they were to make their way to Vigia and bring back 
first aid in the form of a fresh mule. In half an hour or so 
we were rejoiced to see them returning, leading Lunatico, 
and accompanied by a third man, who had encountered the 
beast pelting down the line, and, guessing what had 
happened, promptly stopped him. 

This time we fastened the traces firmly on each side of 
the flat car, handing over the reins to the old muleteer with 
the warning that if anything further happened he and 
compadre should act as mules, and drag the car into Vigia, 
with a liberal ration of whip. Lunatico set off at a magnifi- 
cent gallop, the light car swaying, bumping, and lurching 
over the uneven road bed, and threatening every moment 
to upset us into the vile smelling swamp on either side. 
Poor old hombre’s time was divided about equally between 
petitioning the saints for a safe deliverance, cursing the 
gringos—Americans—holding the reins, and endeavouring 
to retain his seat on the car. Indeed, the latter feat gave 
us all as much to do as we could accomplish, for the great 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 6I 


pile of baggage, to the top of which we were clinging, 
endeavouring to keep its component parts from being 
jerked off into the swamp, everyone grasping his own most 
valued possessions, swayed about like a ship in a heavy 
swell, shedding along our track here a pot, there a calabash, 
and anon a string of dry corn cake, whose loss the darkness 
temporarily hid from their owners. 

With no worse losses than these we reached Vigia between 
8 and 9 p.m., where we were treated by Messrs. Martin & 
Martinez to a real dinner, no single item of which had ever 
dwelt in a tin. 

Next morning early we boarded the Lilian Y, and, passing 
the wreck of the Independencia, and the lighthouse at 
Ascension, arrived at Boca Paila about 4 p.m. This is a 
narrow inlet through which runs a five-knot current, against 
which we had great difficulty in taking the pram in. It 
opens up into a vast shallow lagoon studded with mangrove 
cays, connected to the south with the Chetumal Bay, and 
to the north, it is said, by devious waterways, even with 
Yalahau Lagoon, in the extreme north of the peninsula. 
This vast shallow lagoon is a sportsman’s paradise, as the 
water is literally swarming with fish—snapper, stone bass, 
mullet, and many other varieties, which in turn attract 
sharks, barracouda, and larger fish, with myriads of aquatic 
birds. We saw great numbers of cranes, spoonbills, curlew, 
and plover, flocks of the beautiful scarlet ibis, and even 
considerable numbers of egrets, now becoming year by year 
shyer and rarer in most places, by reason of the constant 
war waged against them for their plumes, but in this 
remote spot, where the foot—or rather the keel—of man 
hardly ever passes, still common, and comparatively 
tame. 

Opening into this lagoon is a little creek navigable only 
for small canoes. It leads to the fresh water lagoon of 
Chunyancha, by the side of which dwell the last few 
representatives of the Chunyancha tribe of Indians, a 
branch of the Maya, their miserable hovels of sticks and 


62 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


palm-leaf thatch being placed within a stone’s throw 
of the stone-walled ruins of their more noble ancestors’ 
dwellings. 

We left Boca Paila with regret, and, indeed, one might 
pass an ideal holiday here, camping out on the fine white 
sandy beach, under the glorious tropical sun, the heat 
tempered by the almost constant cool breezes from the 
Caribbean ; fish and fowl in great variety to be had for the 
taking, driftwood in abundance for the camp-fire, and no 
troublesome human to break the peace of nature from year’s 
end to year’s end. 

About I a.m. next morning we made San Migue, the 
capital of the island of Cozumel. Pandemonium seemed to 
have broken loose on the island, singing, howling, shouting, 
drums beating, bands braying, guns exploding, dogs barking, 
all tortured the quiet night, and proclaimed the strenuous 
observance of the last day of carnival. The noise was so 
terrific that we could not go to sleep, and so lay on and off 
some distance from the shore till about 7 a.m., when we 
landed for an interview with the Administrador del Aduana, 
or Chief of Customs, an educated Mexican, dressed in nicely- 
pressed grey silk suit, tight, highly-polished grey kid boots, 
with silk stockings to match, a grey figured shirt, and—no 
collar or tie. 

The little plaza, or public square, facing the sea contains 
a pretentious statue of President Juares, and a fine stone 
clock tower, but is neglected and overgrown with weeds 
and rank vegetation. These two—the Administrador and 
the plaza—epitomise in themselves what may be termed the 
Neo Mexican culture, the keynote of which is meretricious- 
ness—a constant striving after the grandiose and 
impressive in architecture, institutions, and culture, a 
lamentable falling short, and attainment only of the 
ridiculous. 

The island, which is about 50 kilometres long by 20 broad, 
when Stephens visited it in 1841 was absolutely uninhabited ; 
now, however, it supports a population of probably 1,500 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 63 


souls, mostly Yucatan and Indian fishermen, some of whom 
also cultivate patches of henequen and coco-nuts. The life 
is an easy one. Dinner can be caught off the end of the 
wharf at any time in ten minutes ; corn cake is cheap ; and 
the coco-nuts, which require practically no tending on this 
wonderful sandy soil, provide the rum, tobacco, and cotton 
for a pair of trousers and shirt, which are all most of the 
inhabitants demand of existence. 

The one fly in the ointment is the swarm of Mexican 
federal officials—the Judges, the Captain of the Port, the 
Paymaster, the Administrador, with their numerous staffs— 
who have to be supported—and handsomely supported at 
that. It must, however, be admitted that, except in very 
lean times, these prey rather off the stranger within their 
gates than off the native—a custom prevalent in most small 
Mexican ports, where high titled officials with expensive 
tastes but very meagre salaries have to supplement the 
latter to the best of their ability in order to gratify the 
former. We realised this when we had to pay over 200 
dollars in port dues of various sorts in our progress from 
Payo Obispo to Progreso, though we had cleared directly 
from the former to the latter place, with permission to call 
wherever we wished en route. 

Next day, with true Mexican hospitality, our new friends 
refused to let us go till we had attended a dance they were 
getting up in our honour that night. We pointed out that 
the night of Ash Wednesday was no time for good Catolicos 
to get up a dance; they replied that, having had a hot time 
during the carnival, they felt like keeping it up a little while 
longer, for which our presence offered an excellent excuse. 
Messengers were sent round to warn the sefioritas of the 
pueblo, and about 8 p.m. a considerable crowd had collected 
in the dance house on the plaza, open on all sides to the 
winds of heaven, and to various mirones, or onlookers, 
without whom no Yucatecan dance is complete. These 
consist of dogs, children, loafers, the aged female relatives 
of the performers, and, indeed, of all the inhabitants of the 


64 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


pueblo with nothing particular to do. Most of the guests, 
in deference to the day, had a smear of ashes on their heads 
or foreheads; later on, however, as in response to the 
stimulus of the vino del pais, things became more lively, 
Held (whose abilities at quick-fire portraiture and carica- 
ture proved of inestimable assistance to us throughout 
the trip), with the aid of a little charcoal, red ochre, 
and grease, transformed them into a company of 
demons. 

This vino del pais—wine of the country—new native 
white rum, is an insidious liquor, producing, when taken in 
moderation, merely a gentle exhilaration and sense of 
bien étre, but leaving, even with the strictest moderation, 
a most evil head and stomach on the “ morning after ’”’ to 
those not broken in to it. 

Like all Spaniards both men and women were excellent 
dancers, and performed danza, danzon, and Spanish 
quadrilles as if their hearts were in the business. 

The island ladies are fine, sltummocky, upstanding young 
women, perhaps not so slim, graceful, and alluring as the 
mestizas of the mainland. 

The few hours’ sleep we had that night were taken on the 
beach, to avoid the noise of the dogs, which are the curse of 
all Yucatecan villages, where they take complete charge at 
night, wandering about in bands, rendering sleep impossible 
for the stranger and a stroll in the streets after dark not 
unattended with danger, as, though great cowards, they 
will, when reinforced by numbers, and under cover of dark- 
ness, attack anyone they do not know. 

Next morning, after a bathe and tea, we started for the 
ruins of the ancient church situated about a mile from the 
village, and now buried in the bush. We were particularly 
anxious to see this venerable building, which is generally 
regarded as the first Christian church erected upon the 
American continent, as it stands upon the traditional site 
of the chapel erected by Cortez on his way to the conquest 
of Mexico in 1519. The incident as related by Bernal Diaz, 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 65 


who accompanied the conqueror, and was an eye-witness 
of the occurrence, is as follows: 


“ The Island of Cozumel, it seems, was a place to which 
the Indians made pilgrimages, for the neighbouring 
tribes of the promontory of Cotoche, and other districts 
of Yucatan, came hither in great numbers to sacrifice to 
some abominable idols which stood in a temple there. 
One morning we perceived that the place where these 
horrible images stood was crowded with Indians and 
their wives. They burnt a species of resin, which very 
much resembled our incense, and as such a sight was so 
novel to us, we paid particular attention to all that went 
forward. Upon this an old man, who had on a wide 
cloak, and was a priest, mounted on the very top of the 
temple, and began preaching something to the Indians. 
We were all very curious to know what the purport of 
this sermon was, and Cortez desired Mechorego to inter- 
pret it to him. Finding that all he had been saying 
tended to ungodliness, Cortez ordered the caziques and 
the principal men among them, with the priest, into his 
presence, giving them to understand as well as he could, 
by means of our interpreter, that if they were desirous of 
becoming our brethren they must give up sacrificing to 
these idols, which were no gods, but evil beings by which 
they were led into error and their souls sent to hell. He 
then presented them with the image of the Virgin Mary 
and a cross, which he desired them to put up instead. 
These would prove a blessing to them at all times, make 
their seeds grow, and preserve their souls from eternal 
perdition. This and many other things respecting our 
holy religion Cortez explained to them in a very excellent 
manner. The caziques and priests answered that their 
forefathers had prayed to their idols before them, because 
they were good gods, and that they were determined to 
follow their example, adding that we should experience 


what power they possessed ; as soon as we had left them 
EL 


66 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


we should certainly all of us go to the bottom of the sea. 
Cortez, however, took very little heed of their threats, 
but commanded the idols to be pulled down and broken 
to pieces, which was accordingly done without any further 
ceremony. He then ordered a quantity of lime to be 
collected, which is here in abundance, and with the 
assistance of the Indian masons a very pretty altar was 
constructed, on which we placed the image of the Holy 
Virgin. At the same time two of the carpenters, Alonzo 
Yanez and Alvaro Lopez, made a cross of new wood 
which lay at hand ; this was set up in a kind of chapel, 
which we built behind the altar. After all this was 
completed, Father Juan Diaz said Mass in front of the 
new altar, the caziques and priests looking on with the 
greatest attention.” 


The ruins of the church, measuring 98ft. in length and 
36ft. 2in. in breadth, face east and west. The roof has 
entirely fallen in, while the west 


wall has completely disappeared. 
i Gd | Stucco-covered remains of the other 
- walls still stand, varying in height 
IL ty from two to ten feet. Inside we 


discovered six large and one small 

| overground vaults, built of stone 

I and mortar, shaped something like 
AY eae rates Gh an inverted iron bath-tub. These 
Ancient Olirch oa tes had all been opened, probably by 


Island of Cozumel. treasure seekers. Inside one we 
A. Altar. 

B'S BOvopreund Veen found the complete skeleton of a 

C.C.C. windows. young Mestisa woman, which had 


been buried for from sixty to eighty 
years. This secondary use of the church as a burial- 
place had taken place since Stephen’s visit in 1841, as 
he makes no mention of these vaults, and states that 
the island was at that time entirely uninhabited. The 
altar—probably the identical one which Cortez erected 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 67 


in 1519—is now in ruins; just to the west of it the 
floor of the Church has been dug up, doubtless by 
treasure-hunters, exposing a row of seven small, stone-lined 
chambers, possibly the burial-place of successive heads of 
the church in the island. Benito Perez, a priest who accom- 
panied the expedition of Grijalva to Cozumel in the year 
1518, the first occasion upon which Europeans had ever 
touched there, applied to the King of Spain for the bishopric 
of the island, but was put off with the bishopric of Culhua, 
or Mexico, while the Bishopric of Cozumel was conferred 
upon a churchman of far greater eminence, whose remains, 
for all one knows, may have rested peacefully in one of 
these stone cysts till disturbed by the sacrilegious hands of 
greedy seekers after buried treasure, who throughout 
Yucatan have left their mark alike on Christian church and 
heathen temple. 

The island was discovered accidentally by Grijalva while 
endeavouring to follow the course taken by Cordova in the 
previous year along the north coast of Yucatan towards 
Mexico. An itinerary of the voyage was kept by Grijalva’s 
chaplain, who records the landing at Cozumel in the following 
words : 


“On Friday, the sixth of May, the Commandant 
ordered one hundred men to arm themselves. They 
embarked in boats and landed. They were accompanied 
by a priest and expected to be attacked by a great number 
of Indians. Being prepared for defence, they arranged 
themselves in good order, and came to a tower where they 
found no one, and in all the environs did not see a single 
man. The Commandant mounted upon the tower with 
the standard bearer, the flag unfurled. He planted the 
standard upon one of the facades of the tower, took 
possession in the name of the King in the presence of 
witnesses, and drew up a declaration of such taking 
possession. The ascent to this tower was by eighteen 
steps; the base was very massive, one hundred and 


68 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


eighty feet in circumference. At the top rose a small 
tower of the height of two men placed one upon the other. 
Within were figures, bones, and idols they adored. From 
these marks we supposed they were idolaters. 


“While the commandant was at the top of the tower 
with many of our people, an Indian, followed by three 
others who kept the doors, put in the interior a vase with 
very odoriferous perfume, which seemed of storax. This 
Indian was old ; he burnt many perfumes before the idols 
which were in the tower, and sang in a loud voice a song, 
which was always in the same tone. We supposed that 
he was invoking his idols. . . . These Indians carried 
our Commandant with ten or twelve Spaniards, and gave 
them to eat in a hall constructed of stones very close 
together, and covered with straw. Before the hall was 
a large well from which everybody drank. ... They 
then left us alone, and we entered the village, where all 
the houses were built of stone. Among others we saw 
five very well made, and commanded by small towers. 
The base of these edifices is very large and massive ; the 
building is very small at the top. They appeared to 
have been built a long time, but there are also modern 
ones.” 


This temple, standing on a stone-faced pyramid, from 
which Grijalva coolly took possession of the whole country 
in the name of the King of Spain by the simple process of 
proclamation, and from which the great Cortez himself 
threw down the idols of the Indians, and erected close to its 
base the first Christian Church in the New World, possesses 
associations with the conquest and the conquistadores 
unequalled possibly by any other spot on the American 
continent. When Stephens visited the island in 1841 it was 
still standing, and in a fair state of preservation, if one may 
judge by Catherwood’s drawing. Now, however, the little 
temple is a heap of ruins, and nothing remains but the great 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 69 


¢ 


mound upon which it stood, the “ very massive base” of 
Grijalva ; yet one can almost visualise the scene as it occurred 
four hundred years ago—the little group of armour-clad 
Spaniards, swordsmen, crossbowmen, and arquebusiers, 
standing at the base of the pyramid; farther off great 
crowds of half naked Maya, led by their priests, in long, 
blood-soaked cotton robes, and their caciques, with immense 
feather-decorated headdresses and elaborate ornaments 
of gold and jade; Grijalva, mounting solemnly the stone 
steps of the pyramid, and proclaiming through his herald 
the sovereignty of the King of Spain over those lands, which 
for three centuries were to prove the brightest jewel in the 
diadem of Spain, without a thought to the claims of the 
unfortunate aborigines, whose native land was _ being 
torn from them, standing round listening to the proclama- 
tion, entirely ignorant of what it portended. 

On returning to the coast from our visit to the ruins of the 
church, hot, tired, and irritated by prickly heat and 
encounters with mosquitoes and coloradillos—a micro- 
scopic abomination which bores under the skin and causes 
intolerable itching, well named béfe rouge by the French— 
we found ourselves on a flat, rock-bound coast, dotted with 
deep, clear, sandy-bottomed pools, with edges upholstered 
in soft yellow seaweed, suggesting simultaneously to Morley, 
Held, and myself the same idea—a bathe. In two minutes 
we were experiencing the delightfully soothing sensation of 
cold salt water on our tortured skins. Before going in the 
guide had told us to ‘‘ Cuzdadojerisos,” or ““ Beware of 7ertsos,” 
but as jevisos was a new word to us in Spanish, of whose 
meaning we had not the faintest conception, and as there 
seemed nothing to be afraid of in a clear, rock-bound, 
sandy-bottomed pool, where neither sharks nor barracouda 
could enter, we plunged gaily in. 

I was the first to discover the meaning of the word erzso, 
for on sitting down on the rim of the pool I located one 
at once, concealed in the seaweed. They are small 
sea-urchins, or sea-porcupines, hemispherical in shape, and 


70 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


covered with long, sharp black spines, which when sat 
upon penetrate for a considerable distance into one’s 
anatomy. Almost every member of the fauna and flora of 
Yucatan, and the sea surrounding its coast, is armed with 
some weapon, offensive or defensive—tooth, claw, spine, 
spike, sting, or poisonous juice. Nearly every bush and 
tree in the low scrub is provided with its own variety of 
Spine or thorn, one of the worst offenders being the Agave 
Americana, which is cultivated in vast fields all over the 
peninsula for the henequen fibre obtained from its leaves, 
each of these leaves being tipped with a gigantic black 
thorn, sometimes used as pins by the natives, capable of 
putting one’s eye out with the greatest ease. An even 
worse offender is a low bush covered with double curved 
thorns, which not only holds back the traveller through the 
bush, but vomits over him a stream of vicious stinging ants, 
who have their homes in the hollow interiors of the thorns, 
and sally out to the assault on the slightest provocation. 
Insect pests include ticks, mosquitoes, sand-flies, wasps— 
especially in the ruins, where they love to build their nests 
from the roofs of still intact rooms, and settle in a cloud on 
the invader—hornets, doctor-flies, various blood-sucking 
tabanide, centipedes, chiggers or sand-fleas, tarantulas, 
and beef and screw worm flies. Beef worm, so named from 
its prevalence amongst cattle, is the larva of a fly, which, 
deposited on the skin, soon burrows its way through, and 
rapidly develops into a fat, hairy maggot, about one inch 
in length, which in its uneasy wrigglings and protrusions 
of its head through the blow-hole it has left in the skin is 
a constant source of irritation. They seldom attain any 
size in humans, except on the back, where they are not 
visible, as the accepted treatment (a plug of wet tobacco 
over their blow-hole for a few minutes, followed by a 
vigorous squeeze) usually gets rid of them before they get — 
very large, but to dogs, cattle, and other animals, who may 
harbour hundreds of them, they occasionally prove fatal. 
Screw worm is also the larva of a fly resembling a large grey 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 71 


house fly, which crawls up the nose of sleepers and lays its 
eggs in hundreds over the mucous membrane. The larve 
burrow into this, and grow to about half an inch in length, 
causing the membrane to slough off in great patches, and 
usually bringing about the death of the sufferer. 

Poisonous snakes are found in considerable numbers. 
Fortunately, however, they usually get out of one’s way. 
The commonest are the rattlesnake, tomagoff, coral snake, 
and barber’s pole—a beautiful striped red and black snake, 
whose bite is particularly venomous. Nearly every village 
has its own snake-doctor, who, as he treats poisonous and 
non-poisonous snake-bites alike, and the proportion is about 
one of the former to ten of the latter, naturally soon acquires 
a considerable reputation, and is able to raise his fees from 
the eggs, chicken, and corn basis to that of real money. 

Nor are the denizens of the sea far behind those of the 
land in objectionable qualities. Shark and barracouda are 
found all round the coast, awaiting the bather who ventures 
into over two feet of water, while in the shallows numerous 
stinging jelly-fish guard the surface, leaving the patrolling 
of the bottom to innumerable sea-urchins, sea-scorpions, 
and sea-centipedes. 

If I have perhaps dwelt unduly on these pests by land 
and sea, my excuse must be that I have suffered deeply, 
while the experience of the sea-urchin was a particularly 
harrowing one, treated, moreover, by Morley and Held, 
not with the sympathy due it, but with gusts of ribald 
mirth. 

Cozumel possesses no medical practitioner, and, whether 
despite or on account of this fact, is undoubtedly a most 
remarkably salubrious place. Epidemics of yellow fever 
and dysentery, such as ravage the mainland, are unknown 
here, while malaria and hook-worm are rare indeed. To die 
from any other cause than old age is looked upon by the 
inhabitants as abnormal, and somehow not quite comme tl faut. 

We encountered a large proportion of ancients, both men 
and women, in our walks abroad, some of such hoary 


72 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


antiquity as to lead one to believe they must have been 
contemporaneous with the last of the congquistadores. 

We obtained in Cozumel a pilot for the north and north- 
east coasts named Miguel Polanco—a silent, reserved, not 
undignified individual, with greying hair and face criss- 
crossed in all directions by a million little wrinkles, and 
tanned to the colour of saddle-leather by constant exposure 
to sun and wind. He was reported not only to be an excel- 
lent pilot, but to have discovered by accident the ruins of 
an ancient Maya city not very far inland from the coast. 
On interviewing him, this rumour was confirmed. Four 
years previously, when hunting a deer which he had wounded 
near Punta Santa Rosa, between the Chetumal and Espiritu 
Santo Bays, he followed it inland for about a mile, and there, 
buried in the virgin bush, suddenly came upon extensive 
ruined buildings, which even from his imperfect description 
we had no difficulty in identifying as Tuluum style Maya 
ruins. We were greatly elated over this find, and, though 
all of us had been taken in many a time and oft by natives 
whose swans had turned out to be geese—and poor geese 
at that—there was something so circumstantial about 
Polanco’s account, and the details varied so little on repeti- 
tion, that we were convinced there must be a good backing 
of truth behind it. 

Next morning early we set sail from Cozumel, with nearly 
100 miles of our route to retrace in order to reach Punta 
Santa Rosa. Our pilot, as I have remarked, was reserved 
and dignified both in manner and appearance. Indeed, 
clad in steel morion and breastplate, he might well have 
passed as a reincarnation of one of those intrepid pilots, 
equally at home with an astrolobe or a sword, who accom- 
panied the conquistadores to the New World. No sooner 
were we under way than I could see Morley’s speculative 
eye upon him, and I knew his hour had come, for Morley 
has a perfect genius for extracting what he calls “info” 
from everyone with whom he comes in contact who seems 
to have any of that valuable commodity to give up. He 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 73 


promptly seated himself beside Migail on the deck-house, 
and with a bland and ingratiating smile, the New England 
accent toned down to the gentleness of a sucking dove, 
commenced the cross-examination. 

Miguel stood it pretty well for a time; then, taking advan- 
tage of a lull in the barrage of questions, he bolted incon- 
tinently forward, though the spindrift,and the smoke from 
the galley fire combined to render this the least desirable 
part of the ship. Morley returned to his deck chair and 
pondered deeply, till in about half an hour I could see he 
had formulated in his mind a fresh set of questions, when 
Miguel was again summoned aft to be pumped ; and so it 
went on all day, till Miguel, with a wild and harassed look, 
lapsed gloomily into monosyllables. 

Both wind and current being against us, we did not make 
the southern point of Ascension Bay till nearly 7 p.m. 
Though the night was dark, with a mere nail-paring of moon 
showing, Morley and I determined at all costs to sleep ashore, 
and escape for once the horrible rolling of the Lilian Y. 
We bundled our cots, mosquito nets, bedding, and hurricane 
lamps into the pita and, taking Alfredo and George, 
rowed ashore. 

A hundred yards Saath land the water shoaled off so 
badly that even the pram could not 
be shoved in any farther, and we had 
to get out and wade to the low, 2S \ 
sandy shore. We soon had our cots W 
and mosquito curtains up, though 1 baton aa 
the latter flapped and bellied so in — Tiger tracks following a 
the brisk breeze that sleep appeared 7°” Psi OP Ne 
doubtful under them. On returning 
to the pram with a lighted lantern, Alfredo discovered 
tracks on the soft sand, and, of course, had to call our 
attention immediately to them. They had obviously been 
made within a very few hours, as they-were sharply out- 
lined, and situated well below ordinary high-water mark. 
The little sketch will give the reader a better idea of their 


74 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


appearance than a page of description. The front tracks 
are those of a gigantic racoon ; the back those of a good- 
sized tiger, obviously trailing him. They had both emerged 
from the bush, we found, about 100 yds. to the south of our 
camp, and as there was a great inlet of the sea a mile or so 
to the north of this, it appeared probable that the tiger, 
with the racoon stowed inside, would sooner or later pass our 
camp to regain the bush. We sent back to the Lian Y 
for more hurricane lamps, and with a ring of these around 
the cots, and the mosquito curtains flapping and cracking 
in the wind, we lay down, I with a shotgun, and Morley 
with a revolver handy. We found it difficult to get to sleep, 
owing partly to the flapping of the mosquito curtains, but 
chiefly, I imagine, to the proximity of the tiger. Nor was 
our condition improved by Morley, who kept recalling 
instances which he had read, or heard, or imagined, of the 
Central American puma, or jaguar, when driven desperate by 
hunger, attacking humans. I pointed out, however, that 
our tiger was probably peacefully sleeping off the effects 
of a large fat coon, and, in any case, an army of tigers would 
not dare investigate two flapping mosquito curtains 
encircled by a constellation of hurricane lamps. 

We struck camp before six next morning, having seen no 
signs of the tiger. Miguel thought the best place to land 
for the ruins was about ten miles south of our present 
location, so we kept on a course nearly due south close in 
to the reef. Someone thought of fresh fish for breakfast, 
and we remembered we had a couple of spinners on board, 
one of which was immediately thrown overboard. In 
twenty minutes we had caught two barracoudas, one of 
3lbs., one of rolbs., and two rock fish, one of 12lbs. and one 
of 30lbs. 

This strip of coast is a sporting paradise, as the neighbour- . 
hood of the reef swarms with fish, some of them affording 
almost as good sport to the angler as the tarpon, while the 
bush is full of deer, peccari, jaguar, puma, gibunt, wild 
turkey, and curassow, and the swamps and lagoons abound 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 78 


in duck, plover, snipe, and innumerable flocks of aquatic 
birds. 

We landed on a beautiful sandy beach, along which we 
walked in a southerly direction, the pilot carefully scanning 
the bush to try and locate the spot where he had entered in 
pursuit of the wounded deer. We passed in the course of 
a mile eight mahogany logs, worth at least 50 dollars each, 
two oars, quantities of wreckage, and a lifebuoy with s.s. 
~ Iaqua upon it, in addition to strange seeds, fruit stones, and 
beans of all sizes and shapes, corals, sponges, multi-coloured 
seaweeds, gorgeous shells, and all the wonderful flotsam 
and jetsam of the Caribbean, laid out before us on a counter 
of sparkling sand. | 

It would seem as if this strip of coast has never been 
visited by a boat of any size, as there must be thousands 
of dollars’ worth of mahogany logs along its whole extent, 
driven in by the prevailing east winds, from wrecks, and 
from rafts being towed to the embarking point which, 
encountering heavy weather, have got broken up and 
scattered. We seriously contemplated a beachcombing 
expedition later on to exploit the find. 

The pilot at last thought he had located the right spot, 
and we turned into the bush, which here consisted of low 
dense scrub, chiefly pimento, buttonwood, and logwood 
trees, interspersed with the beds of shallow lagoons, now 
dry, and patches of mangrove swamp. These latter, on 
account of their arching aerial roots, rendered walking 
through them a very tedious process. The beds of the dry 
lagoons were criss-crossed in all directions with the tracks 
of game, deer, peccari, gibunt, tiger, wild turkey, and many 
others, some of them quite recent, but we were hunting 
more important game than these, and had not even brought 
our guns. 

After over an hour’s walk in a generally $.S.W. direction 
we determined to lie down for a rest, and let the pilot 
continue the search with Muddy, as it was obvious he did 
not know in the least where he was. In a little more than 


76 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


half an hour we heard shouts to the south of us, and found 
they had discovered the ruins about a quarter of a mile 
away. We all set out with great eagerness, and soon stood 
face to face with the ruined temples, palaces, and public 
buildings of what had evidently been a good-sized Maya 
city, now buried in the midst of this dense, impenetrable 
bush, all tradition of it perished, its very name forgotten, 
and now being viewed probably for the first time by 
European eyes. 





SEA. 


THE TOWN OF SAN MIGUEL COZUMEL, FROM THE 











PLAN OF THE MAIN GROUP OF RUINS. 


CHACMOOL 


[p. 78 








CHAPTER V 


Soldier Crabs and Bats—Clearing the Bush round the Ruins—Hubert lives 
up to his Reputation—Maya never discovered the Principle of the 
Arch—Description of the Temples—A Chacmool’s Offerings found 
buried beside it—Market-place—Curious Stucco Ornaments—Cere- 
monies Performed at these Temples—The Builders of this and other 
East Coast Cities. 

WE had noticed an unusual number of soldier crabs crawling 
about in the bush as we came along, but at the ruins they 
swarmed in countless thousands, from little fellows the 
size of a periwinkle to giants nearing four inches in diameter. 
They crawled over one if one kept quiet for a few minutes, 
dropped on one from the roofs, and crept up the legs of 
one’s trousers. Why such swarms of them should have 
invaded the ruins where there was apparently absolutely 
nothing edible is impossible to imagine, unless, as the pilot 
suggested, they were the souls of ancient Maya citizens 
come back in this incarnation to drive the first white invader 
back from their ancient city, reinforced by bats, scores of 
which fluttered past us and flew in our faces as we entered 
the dark little temple rooms, where for centuries they and 
their ancestors had remained undisturbed. 

We at once started measuring and planning the ruins, 
sending the pilot and Esquivel off to the Lilian Y to bring 
back all hands with machetes and axes to clean as much of 
the bush as possible round the ruined buildings, in order to 
let the light in, and admit of their being photographed. 
All hands were back in under two hours, having cut a track 
from the beach to the ruins about a couple of miles below 
our first landing-place, where the distance proved to be 
under half a mile. They had improved the time during 
our absence by catching a 4olbs. rock fish with the spinner, 

77 


78 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


and harpooning an immense 8ft. June fish, which, however, 
got away by breaking the harpoon. 

For the first time during the trip we were rejoiced to see 
Hubert with a kettle in which to boil water, as we were 
parched with thirst after our morning’s work, having had 
nothing since early tea. Hubert, however, lived nobly up 
to his reputation as a food spoiler, though it seemed hard 
to uphold with only tea to prepare, but he accomplished 
it successfully by smoking the water so badly that, notwith- 
standing our thirst, we could hardly swallow the tea. 

Breakfast over, the men, setting briskly to work with axe 
and machete, soon had a clearing made round the main 
group of ruins large enough to admit of our taking photo- 
graphs of them. A ground plan of this group, which com- 
prises nine buildings, is shown in the figure. Temple A is 
a little sanctuary almost exactly similar in size and con- 
struction to that already described at Central, except that 
in this case there is no trace of an upper story having 
existed. The building is 6ft. gin. in length by 6ft. roin. 
in breadth. The roof is supported by a square column in 
the centre of the building, surrounded by a narrow gallery, 
into which small doorways, 2ft. lin. high, open at each of 
the four sides. Above each doorway is a recessed panel, 
the bottoms of which still show traces of paint. 

The whole structure was originally covered with smooth 
stucco, and painted. A triangular stone cornice passes all 
round the building just above the doors. The original height 
cannot be ascertained, as the upper part of the building has 
been broken down by the root of a good-sized tree growing 
from the roof, but it was under 5ft. 

Temple B, 23ft. 3in. long, by 17ft. 7in. broad, and oft. 
high, is entered by a broad doorway, on its western side 
divided into three entrances by two circular stone columns 
surmounted by square capitals. Above these were originally 
placed sapodilla lintels, traces of which, much decayed, 
may still be seen in situ. The roof is flat. 

The whole building is covered externally with smooth 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 79 


stucco, upon which are still to be seen in several places 
traces of the “red hand,” imprinted by the living member 
dipped in fresh red paint. Round the entire building, 6ft. 
from the ground, runs an ornamental stone cornice. The 
interior of the building is supported on two oblong stone 
columns. The roof, as in all Maya buildings, is supported 
by a false, or corbal, arch formed by the overlapping of 
successive courses of masonry till the interval between— 
usually less than a foot—can be joined by capstones. 

The walls are constructed of thick masses of cement, in 
which stones are firmly embedded, the whole forming 
practically a monolithic arch. 

It would appear that the Maya never discovered the secret 
of the keystone, which is a remarkable circumstance in 
people who had made such strides in architecture, who 
erected such vast stone palaces, temples, and monoliths, 
and the beauty and finish of whose sculpture is unsurpassed 
to this day. 

Temples A and B stand on a stone-faced platform, or 
truncated pyramid, 7ft. 4in. high, approached by two 
terraces, each of which is 3ft. in breadth. On the west side, 
immediately facing the entrance to Temple B, the summit 
of the platform is reached by a flight of stone steps. 

Temple C very closely resembles Temple B, except that 
it is somewhat longer and narrower. The entrance, as in B, 
faces the west, and is divided into three by two circular 
columns capped by square capitals. The whole structure, 
inside and out, is covered with hard stucco; the roof, 
formed by the usual corbel arch, is supported on two oblong 
columns. Against the centre of the back wall was a small 
bench, or altar, of stone, ft. 3in. high, 6ft. 3in. long, and 
aft. 3in. deep. One half of this was broken, showing that 
the interior had been hollow. 

We carefully raised the flat flag which covered the top 
of the other half, and found beneath it a cavity of 
considerable size, perfectly empty. 

Temple D.—This temple was in ruins, the roof having 


80 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


fallen in, leaving only part of the walls and the columns 
supporting the entrance standing. The outline could easily 
be traced, and it was found that the building had originally 
been 4oft. long by oft. broad, approached by two entrances, 
one on the north supported by two stone columns, and a 
small narrow one on the west side. The walls were thinner 
and of more flimsy construction than those of the other 
temples, while the building itself was evidently of much 
later date than Temple C, against whose southern wall it had 
been built, as between the two, where the north wall of D 
had partly separated from it, the older wall of C, covered 
with weathered stucco, was plainly in sight. A single 
circular supporting column was found towards the west end 
of this temple. 

Round the outside wall, 6ft. 3in. from the ground level, 
were the remains of a plain square stone cornice, upon which 
were carved circular indentations, the only attempt at this 
kind of ornament in the whole city. 

Temple E was a small, roughly-constructed, one-roomed 
structure, with a single entrance, 2ft. 8in. wide, on the north 
side. The room into which this led was 5ft 4in. long, 4ft. 
6in. broad, and 4ft. high, from the highest point of the 
corbel arch to the floor, which was covered with hard cement. 
In the east and west walls were small oblong slits for 
windows. 

Temple F, though only roft. 8in. by 8ft. gin. in external 
measurement, was probably the most important sanctuary 
in the group, as it contained the image of the god to whom 
apparently the entire group was dedicated. This statue 
represents a Chacmool, a human figure reclining on its 
back and elbows, the knees drawn up to the buttocks, the 
forearms and hands extended along the outer sides of the 
thighs, the head raised and turned to the left. It is con- 
structed of hard stucco, and represents a man of about 8ft. 
in height, with chest, arms, and legs of heroic porportions. 
At the navel is a saucer-shaped depression in which to burn 
incense. The figure is clothed in a cotton breast-plate, with 





CHACMOOL: FACADE OF TEMPLE “‘C’’:. ON THE RIGHT IS SEEN 
PART OF THE RUINED TEMPLE “D.”’ 


[p. 79 





THE CHACMOOL, YUCATAN, 


[p. 8r 





pe 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 8I 


elaborate collar or neck ornament, and a maxtli, or narrow 
apron, falling between the legs in front. The arms are 
ornamented with shoulder tabs and gauntlet-like objects 
above the wrists. Just below the knees are scalloped bands, 
while on the feet are elaborate sandals. The whole figure 
was originally painted yellow, decorated in red and black 
geometrical designs. The head, which was a good deal 
mutilated, had been broken off at the neck, and was found 
by the side of the statue. These Chacmool figures are of 
Nahua, or Mexican origin, and are found at only one other 
Maya site, namely Chichen Itza, where Mexican artistic 
and religious influence is found strongly developed, having 
been introduced about the beginning of the thirteenth 
century by Aztec mercenaries employed by the King of 
Mayapan in his wars against the ruler of Chichen Itza. 

It was by the merest accident that we discovered this 
Chacmool statue, as it had been completely buried by the 
accumulated dirt and rubbish of centuries, leaving only 
the tops of the knees projecting for a few inches. These 
were discovered by George, who with racial curiosity com- 
menced excavating with his machete around them, bringing 
to light the brightly-painted stucco covering the legs. He 
called our attention to these, and, setting all hands to work, 
we soon had the whole statue uncovered down to the stucco 
floor with which it was incorporated. In removing the 
débris from around the figure we found buried in it at one 
place a shell gorget, two greenstone beads, an ear-plug, 
some fragments of the bones of a large animal (probably a 
tapir) and a small pottery incense burner, with a human 
head in high relief on its outer surface. Some devotee, 
faithful even after the fall and destruction of his god and 
its supersedure by the God of the Christians, must have 
made this little offering, probably at some period after the 
mutilation had taken place, but before dirt and débris had 
begun to accumulate around the statue. The offering 
itself, consisting of flesh, now represented by dry bones, 


burning incense, now but a few charred fragments at 
FL 


82 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the bottom of the incense burner, and personal jewellery, is 
a typical Maya one of the period, such as are found by the 
thousand in the great cenote, or sacred well, at Chichen 
Itza, the Mecca of the Maya religion, to which pilgrimages 
were made from the remotest parts of Yucatan. 

We learn from the early Spanish Fathers that it was no 
uncommon thing for the Indians baptised into the Catholic 
Church to apostasize and revert to their ancient gods, 
making offerings at their shrines, and carrying out the rites 
and ceremonies of their ancient religion in the depths of 
the forest, far from prying Christian eyes. Such practices 
were naturally strongly discouraged by the padres, and the 
images of the old gods were, where and whenever found, 
destroyed and mutilated, while the manuscripts of the Maya, 
handed down in the priesthood for hundreds of years, and 
containing the history, religious ceremonies, system of 
medicine, and calendar of the people, painted in their 
glyphic system on paper made of the fibre of the American 
aloe, were ruthlessly burnt, so that of the thousands of 
them existing at the time of the conquest but three remain 
to-day. 

The western opening of Temple F towards which the 
Chacmool faces is 7ft. 6in. wide, while the eastern opening is 
only 4ft. wide. The feet of the image occupy nearly the 
centre of the wider opening, but the head does not come 
within a couple of feet of the narrower one, so that a pro- 
cession coming through the temple would naturally divide 
into two streams at the feet of the image, one passing on 
either side, meeting again at its head, to emerge from the 
eastern door. 

Temple G, immediately to the south of Temple F, is 
15ft. gin. long by 13ft. wide, and 5ft. high from the top of 
the roof to the stucco floor. It possesses a single opening 
on the western side, 5ft. 1oin. wide, divided into two by a 
circular stone column. Like the other buildings, it is faced 
inside and out with hard stucco. 

Temple G has evidently (as shown in the plan) been built 





tHe CHACMOOL IN SITU WITHIN A LITTLE TEMPLE IN MAIN 
LINE OF APPROACH TO CHIEF TEMPLE, 


[p. 80 











IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 83 


around a much smaller building, which measured but 
7fit. 5in. by 7ft. The junction between the walls of\the old 
and the newer structures is very clearly indicated. No 
attempt had been made to destroy the older building, and 
it still stands entire, with its narrow doorway, 2ft. wide, 
within the newer one. 

Structure H is a dance platform, measuring 23ft. by 
r8ft. 9in. It is approached by flights of stone steps, each 
8ft. 5in. broad, on the east and west sides. The original 
platform, the outline of which can still easily be traced, 
measured 17ft. 6in. by 13ft. 3in. This, however, was 
enlarged by the construction on all four sides of it of a wall 
aft. 8in. in width. 

The great colonnaded structure shown in the plan is much 
ruined. The whole roof has caved in, and many of the 
circular columns which supported it have given way. The 
corner walls, aa, at the western extremity have fallen down, 
while the terraces of the platform upon which it stood are so 
covered with detritus and vegetal earth, upon which has 
grown up a thick growth of bush, as to be hardly 
distinguishable. 

The building itself was ro2ft. long by 27ft. roin. broad. 
It was bounded at each angle by rectangular walls, aa, 
a@ a, measuring 12ft. 7in. on the east and west sides and 
14ft. on the north and south. The walls were built of 
squared stones filled in with rubble, and were 3ft. 3in. thick. 
_ At the points 0d on the east and west sides are doorways 
ait. 8in. wide, which leads one to suppose that the north 
and south sides, now completely open, were at one time 
either boarded up or walled with adobe, otherwise, two 
sides of the building being quite open, doors would have 
been unnecessary. 

The roof was apparently flat, probably of thatch, sup- 
ported on sapodilla beams, which rested on the twenty- 
four stone columns, many of which are still intact. The 
building is approached by three broad, stone-faced terraces, 
and when complete must have been a very imposing 


84 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


structure. It was probably used as a market-place or 
assembly hall, for either of which purposes it was eminently 
fitted by its spaciousness, and the coolness which, owing 
to its high situation, well exposed to the sea breeze, and its 
palm-leaf roof, it must have possessed. 

In the open space between Temples C and D was found 
the sugarloaf-shaped object shown in the illustration. This 
was 2ft. 6in. high, made of cement 
and stone, and covered with a 
layer of hard stucco. Traces of red 
paint still remained upon it. It 
had originally formed the head- 
Oh dress of a human figure, as the 

acmool—Stucco incense ; ; 

holder and headdress. typical Maya ear-plugs can still be 

plainly seen on either side of the 

blank space (shaded in the figure) from which the face has 

been broken away. The upper part of the headdress is 

ornamented with rows of spines about Iin. in length. A 

similar object was found to the east of Temple F, but 
no trace of the figures from which they had been broken. 

The curious T-shaped object was discovered between 
Temples C and F. It is 3ft. high, but has been detached 
below from its base along the line cc. The arms have been 
broken off at the points aa, but the two T-shaped prolonga- 
tions bb were discovered close to the figure. These are 
evidently meant to represent small double incense burners, 
as the pellets of incense, as used by the Maya, may be seen 
moulded in the stucco on either side of them at dd. 

Five yards west of Temple G were found six remarkable 
objects, all constructed of extremely hard concrete, covered 
with a layer of smooth stucco, and all firmly rooted in the 
ground on concrete bases. They consist of : 

1. A concrete stool, with supports of the same material 
at each angle. 

2. A cube of concrete resting on a larger concrete base, 
and supporting a circular column, the top of which has 
been broken off. 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 85 


3. A pyramidal column surmounted by a cup-shaped 
cap, the total height being rft. gin. 

4. A square concrete pedestal, 6in. high by rft. gin. in 
diameter. 

5. A square column 8in. high, on two sides of which are 
still visible traces of human heads moulded in stucco, which 
had been attached to it. 

6. A low square pedestal 16in. in diameter. 

These curious objects are unique, as they have been 
found at no other Maya site either in Yucatan or the south, 
and they probably belong to the very last phase of the 
Maya culture before its final extinction by the Spaniards. 
The actual use to which they were put is doubtful, though 
they were almost certainly connected with the ritual 
employed in the worship of the Chacmool, and while two of 
them were probably used to contain the burning incense, 
the others may have served as altars, or tables upon which 
to place the vessels of balché and corn made drinks, the 
cakes of ground corn, beans, and pumpkin seeds, the roast 
meats, and other offerings such as we have seen the modern 
Maya offer to their ancient gods. 

The incense burners seen above, containing pellets of 
artificial incense, have their counterparts in those candelabra 
which one sometimes sees in churches, in which small electric 
bulbs at the end of the counterfeit candles supply the 
illumination. 

The group of buildings A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H was 
almost certainly religious in character, the earliest of them, 
with the platform upon which they stand, being A and B; 
F containing the Chacmool image, the small simple structure 
within G, and the original dance platform now forming the 
core of the enlarged platform H. 

In the light of our knowledge of the religious ceremonies 
of the ancient Maya, derived from their own records and 
contemporary accounts of the Spanish conquerors, one can 
easily visualise what took place along this via sacra from the 
dance platform, through the Chacmool temple, up the 


86 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


flight of steps, to the main temple, at some special celebra- 
tion some five hundred years ago. The procession of wild- 
looking, half-crazy, unwashed priests, smelling horribly, 
their gory hair matted, and their white cotton robes smeared 
with the blood of countless previous sacrifices, marched up 
the western steps of the dance platform, where certain 
chants were sung and dithyrambic dances performed, 
marching down to the eastern steps of the platform. At 
the conclusion of the dances the procession would come to 
the Chacmool temple, where at the feet of the god it would 
split in two as it entered by the broad western gate, to unite 
again at the head of the god before leaving by the narrow 
eastern gate. Meanwhile incense was being burnt, food 
offerings made, and prayers and petitions chanted to the 
god outside Temple G, and in times of stress—as famine, 
drought, pestilence, invasions by barbarous Caribs from 
the south, and later by enemies from the north—the human 
victim, or victims, the choicest youths of both sexes, were 
added, bound and partly stupefied by drugs, to the proces- 
sion of priests. Leaving the eastern gate of the Chacmool 
temple, the procession, leading the victims, would slowly 
mount the steps of the great main platform which lay 
directly in front of it, and then, on the summit of the plat- 
form, in front of the main temple, and in full sight of all the 
people, assembled in their thousands at a respectful distance 
from the sacred enclosure, and no doubt, after the manner 
of their kind all the world over, using the great market- 
place and its terraces as a grand stand from which to view 
the proceedings, the victim would be sacrificed after the 
cruel Mexican fashion—stretched on his back on an altar 
of wood or stone, two priests holding each leg, while two 
supported each arm high above his head, and a fifth plunged 
a sharp triangular blade of flint or obsidian deep into his 
chest well over the region of the heart, and, inserting one 
hand into the opening, dragged that organ out of the chest 
cavity and severed it from its attachment of blood vessels, 
being deluged in the process with a stream of hot arterial 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 87 


blood. The heart was taken, still palpitating, to B, the 
main temple, where it was offered to the god, and the 
ceremonies connected with sacrifice were concluded. 

Meanwhile, in front of the temple the corpse was decapi- 
tated by the priests, the head being their special perquisite, 
while the body, rolled down the steps of the platform, was 
eagerly hacked in pieces by the people, who scrambled each 
for a fragment like starving dogs for a bone, for this quasi- 
ceremonial religious cannibalism was one of the many evil 
practices introduced among the Maya by the Mexicans. 
How many times these ancient buildings have witnessed 
such cruel and bloody rites it is impossible to tell yet, as 
we have seen, after the fall of the deity one poor worshipper 
at least retained faith enough to return and make his 
offering at the deserted shrine—a faith not always inspired 
by more beneficent gods. 

Structures D and E, with the enclosing walls of G, and 
the enlargement of the dance platform H, are all of more 
recent construction than the main group, though what 
period elapsed between the building of the two it is impos- 
sible to say. Cis almost certainly a temple, possibly dedicat- 
ed to one of the two principal gods of the Maya proper, 
Itzamna, or Cuculcan, while D may well have been the 
dwelling-place of some of the priests. A was obviously one 
of those little shrines peculiar to this east coast civilisation, 
which we have met with before at Espiritu Santo Bay and 
Central, and will meet with again farther north. We dis- 
covered two more of them at Chacmool before we left— 
one between the ruins and the sea, the other at some distance 
to the west of the main group. 

In order to obtain some clue as to the identity of the 
builders of these ruins, and of other similar groups along 
the east coast of Yucatan, all conforming closely to the 
Tuluum style, it is necessary to give a brief account of the 
history of the Maya who occupied Yucatan. This we obtain 
from the early Spanish historians, from their own records— 
known as the books of Chilam Balaam, which were kept 


88 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


originally by several cities in their own hieroglyphic writings 
and later transcribed into Maya, written in Latin characters 
by natives who acquired a knowledge of the Spanish 
language—and lastly, to a small extent, from their 
hieroglyphic records on stone still extant at many of the 
ruins. 


CHAPTER VI 


Maya History—Its Sources—Methods of Reckoning the Passage of Time— 


History of the Old Empire—History of the New Empire—Foundation 
of the Various Cities in the Maya Area—Reasons for Maya deserting 
their Old Cities for Yucatan—Settlement of New Empire—Founding 
of New Cities—Itzamna, the Hero God—Migration from Chichen Itza 
to Champoton—Return to Chichen Itza—Entry of the Tutul Xiu to 
Yucatan—The Hero God Cuculcan—The Maya Renaissance—The 
Breaking-up of the Maya Triple Alliance—Its Cause—Mexican Mer- 
cenaries called into Yucatan—The Cocomes Rule in Yucatan for 250 
Years—They are overcome by the Tutul Xiu—The Country is divided 
up into a Number of Small States constantly at War till the Coming 
of the Spaniards—Naming the new City Chacmool—The Period to 
which these Ruins belong—Uncomfortable Quarters—We take leave 
of Chacmool. 


DurinG the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era the 
Maya developed what was undoubtedly the highest abori- 
ginal civilisation of the New World. Maya history has been 
divided by Sylvanus G. Morley, of the Carnegie Institution, 
into two main epochs, the Old Empire, or Empire of the 
South, and the New Empire, or Empire of Yucatan. Each 
of these is again sub-divided into several periods. 


i, 


vi. 
vii. 


Vili. 


PERIODS OF MAYA HISTORY 
OLD EMPIRE 
Archaic Period Earliest Times Down To 9.10.0.0.0.! 1 Ahau 
8 Kayab. 360 A.D. (circa) 
Middle Period g.10.0.0.0. I Ahau To 9.15.0.0.0. 4 Ahau 


8 Kayab. 360 A.D. 13 Yax. 460 A.D. (circa) 
Great Period g.15.0.0.0. 1 Ahau To 10.2.0.0.0. 3 Ahau 
13 Yax. 460 A.D. 3 Ceh. 600 A.D. (circa) 
NEw EMPIRE 
Colonisation Period Katun 6 Ahau To Katun 1 Ahau 
420 A.D. 620 A.D. (circa) 
Transitional Period Katun 12 Ahau To Katun 4 Ahau 
620 A.D. 980 A.D. (circa) 
Renaissance Period Katun 2 Ahau To Katun 8 Ahau 
980 A.D. II90 A D.. (circa) 
Toltec Period Katun 8 Ahau To Katun 8 Ahau 
II9O A.D. 1450 A.D. (circa) 
Final Period Katun 8 Ahau To Katun 13 Ahau 
1450 A.D, 1537 A.D. (ctrca) 


19 Cycles ro Katuns o Tuns o Uinals o Kins after the starting-point of Maya 
Chronology, which occurred on a certain 4 Ahau the ninth day of the month 
Cumhu, approximately in the year 3400 B.c. of our era. 


89 


90 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


It will be observed that in the Old Empire the passage of 
time was recorded by the lapse of so many cycles (400-year 
periods), katuns (20-year periods), tuns (360-day periods), 
uinals (months; eighteen of 20 days, one of 5 days), and 
kins (days), from the starting-point of Maya chronology, 
while during the New Empire it was reckoned by the pas- 
sage of so many katuns, or 20-year periods, numbered, in 
order to distinguish them from each other, from I to 13. 
The Old Empire flourished during the first six centuries of 
the Christian era in Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and the 
western part of Honduras; the New Empire, which was 
gradually evolved from the old, flourished in the peninsula 
of Yucatan from the early years of the sixth century to the 
Spanish conquest. 

The history of the Old Empire is derived exclusively from 
the hieroglyphic inscriptions found chiefly on monoliths still 
standing among its ruined cities. 

The history of the New Empire is derived chiefly from 
native chronicles, which give brief synopses of the chief 
events occurring during every katun, or 20-year period. 

Of the origin of the Maya civilisation nothing is known. 
The accurate calendar system, the complicated hierogly- 
phics, and the wonderful astronomical knowledge, postulat- 
ing centuries of effort, emerge from the womb of time, and 
greet us fully developed about the first century before our 
era. Where and when their civilisation originated, and 
how developed, are probably among the many mysteries 
surrounding this remarkable people which will never be 
solved. 

The earliest dated Maya object was found, curiously 
enough, outside the region where the Maya civilisation as 
known to us flourished, namely, at San Andres Tuxtla, in 
the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico. It is a small nephrite 
statue, and bears a date in the early part of cycle 8 in Maya 
chronology, or about 100 B.c. If this statuette were made 
where it was found, it would indicate that we must look for 
the birthplace of the Maya civilisation in this region 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND gl 


rather than 200 miles to the south, where it attained its 
highest development. We have ample proof, in ruined 
cities still extant, that during the first century of the 
Christian era the Maya were firmly established in Northern 
Guatemala, Southern Mexico, and Western Honduras. The 
earliest dated object from this region is a small jadeite 
plate from the department of Yzabal, in Guatemala, close 
to the Rio Graciosa. It bears a date towards the end of 
cycle 8 of Maya chronology, or about 50 A.D., while of the 
larger remains the earliest dated monument, or stele, was 
discovered by Morley at Uaxactun, and is nearly contem- 
poraneous with the Yzabel plate. 

The next earliest is not found till 170 years later. It was 
erected at the city of Tikal, in Guatemala, in the third 
katun, or 20-year period, of cycle 9, or about 210 A.D. 

After this, in rapid succession, we find at Copan stele, 
250 A.D., Piedras Negras, 350 A.D., and finally Naranjo, 
360 A.D., the last city erected during the archaic 
period. 

Numbers of cities were founded during the middle period 
of the First Empire, of which the two most important are 
Palenque and Yaxchilan. The former, founded at the end 
of the 11th katun of the gth cycle (about 370 A.D.), is, 
owing to the magnificence of its temples and palaces, the 
beauty of its stucco moulding, and perhaps more than all 
to the presence of the cross as an emblem of worship on 
several of the tablets, probably the best known of all the 
Maya ruins. 

Towards the end of this period, in the 15th katun of the 
oth cycle (about 450 A.D.), was founded the city of Quirigua, 
an offshoot or colony from Copan. Here was discovered the 
largest monument in the Maya area—a gigantic monolith 
weighing fifty tons, covered with elaborate carving, and 
projecting above ground to a height of twenty-six feet. 
This stele, ever since its discovery, has leaned twelve feet 
from the perpendicular, but a few months before the destruc- 
tion of the city of Guatemala by the earthquake shocks of 


92 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


1917, as if to give warning of the impending catastrophe, it 
fell flat upon its face, though no slightest seismic tremor 
had as yet been apparent in the vicinity. 

During the third or great period of the Old Empire large 
numbers of cities were founded, including the important 
centres of Nakum, Seibal, and Ixkun, while all the older 
cities continued to flourish. This was the golden age of the 
Maya—the flood-tide of their artistic development and 
commercial greatness. The country was covered with 
great cities, and, judging by their architectural output, the 
population must have been a very large one, to support 
whom the land (now a sea of virgin forest, buried beneath 
which from time to time are found the ruined temples and 
palaces of its former rulers) must have then been intensively 
cultivated. 

Hundreds of great monoliths were erected during this 
era throughout the country to mark the passage of 5-year 
periods, or hotuns, and to record the principal events 
occurring in them—a fortunate thing for posterity, as it is 
on these tables of stone that our knowledge of this period 
of Maya history now exclusively rests. 

Early in the Great Period an important event occurred— 
the colonisation by emigrants from the Old Empire of the 
province of Bakhalal, in Southern Yucatan, which they 
occupied from about 460 to 580 A.D., when moving farther 
north. They founded the city of Chichen Itza, later to 
become the capital city of the New Empire. 

From the stele and monuments we are able to form a 
fairly accurate idea of the customs, religious observances, 
dress, and appearance of the people of the Old Empire. 
The cities have been dated with great accuracy, their system 
of numeration, calendar system, and astronomical know- 
ledge have been worked out, while some idea of the ancient 
population is to be obtained from the number and extent 
of the ruined cities scattered throughout the region, and the 
elaborate sculptural decorations which they contain. Here, 
however, our knowledge ceases, for the names of their rulers 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 93 


and priests, of the gods they worshipped, of the cities they 
dwelt in and the events which occurred in them—pestilence, 
famine, war, dynastic changes—of the origin and growth of 
their civilisation, in fact, of practically every particular 
which lends human interest to the history of a people, we 
are densely ignorant, the reason being that up to the present 
only about one-third of the hieroglyphic characters inscribed 
upon the stele and monoliths have been deciphered, and 
these deal almost exclusively with time counts, and the 
fixation of the date recorded on the stone in its proper place 
in the solar and lunar calendar. 

The same eager workers, however, who after years of 
patient research succeeded in elucidating the glyphs already 
known to us, are patiently at work on the undeciphered 
glyphs, of which many more have been discovered, and 
accurately photographed and drawn, in recent years, and 
it is almost certain that within the next few years we shall 
be able to obtain from these a pretty accurate idea, not only 
of the main events which occurred during the 700 to 800 
years which the Old Empire, as known to us, existed, but 
also of the history of the Maya previous to the opening of 
the Old Empire, when—as previously stated—we find their 
civilisation already fully developed. 

Early in cycle 10 the Maya had entirely deserted their 

southern cities, and the first katun, or 20-year period, of 
this cycle is recorded only at three cities—Tikal, Seibal, and 
Flores—after which complete silence and darkness close 
down on these once magnificent cities for a period of over a 
thousand years, and, indeed, in many cases to the present 
century. 
The city of Uaxactum, discovered by Dr. Morley as 
recently as 1915, contains a stele recording as a contem- 
poraneous date the 14th katun of the 8th cycle, or about 
60 A.D., indicating that its ruins have been buried in the 
virgin forest, unvisited by man, the haunt of the monkey, 
the jaguar, and the snake, for a period of nearly nineteen 
centuries. 


94 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Why the Maya should suddenly have deserted their cities 
practically within one katun, or 20-year period, representing, 
as they must have done, such an immense capital expendi- 
ture in labour alone, in the construction of palaces and 
public buildings, and the erection and sculpture of stele, 
steeped, as they were, in the history and traditions of their 
ancestors for nearly a thousand years, hallowed by the 
temples of their gods and outward symbols of their religion, 
is one of those inexplicable mysteries which one constantly 
encounters in the history of this remarkable people. Imagine 
the inhabitants of England south of Yorkshire migrating 
en masse to the north of Scotland within a period of twenty 
years or so, leaving their old homes deserted, and settling 
down permanently in their new environment, and one has 
a fair picture of what occurred on a smaller scale in Central 
America in the sixth century of our era. 

Various explanations have been put forward to account 
for this sudden exodus, one being that the primitive agri- 
cultural methods of the Maya reduced the land to such a 
condition that ultimately it became untillable under their 
system of cultivation, which consisted simply in felling 
and burning the forest during the dry season, and planting, 
at the beginning of the rains, a process which in time allows 
perennial grasses to take the place of the woody growths 
and renders cultivation impossible. 

A second theory is that during the closing years of the 
Old Empire profound climatic changes took place in this 
part of Central America, resulting in a great increase in the 
rainfall, which not only rendered the climate unhealthy, 
but increased the growth of bush to such an extent as to 
interfere with agriculture. 

The third theory advanced by Spinden is that the deca- 
dence in art which became manifest towards the close of 
the Old Empire was accompanied by moral and physical 
degenerative changes, which led to its disruption. 

My own opinion is that this exodus took place at the 
command of the gods as voiced by the priests, for we shall 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 95 


see the same mysterious desertion of their cities, and emigra- 
tion to new localities, without apparent reason, taking 
place, not once, but many times, amongst the Maya of the 
New Empire. 

Whatever the cause, we find about the year 600 A.D. the 
southern cities entirely deserted, and the New Empire well 
under way. The first settlement was made at Bakalal, 
in Spanish colonial times known as Bacalar, now a deserted 
city, with the ruins of stately churches, convents, monasteries 
forts, and palaces, extending on all sides through the all- 
conquering bush, having been overthrown in the 1848 war 
of the castes by the descendants of those very Maya whose 
ancestors the Spaniards had subdued. The blood of the 
Spaniards who in this rising paid the penalty for their 
cruelty and oppression of their ancestors, is still to be seen 
staining the walls of the church, in the nave of which their 
bones were till recently piled in a gigantic mound. 

Bakalal was occupied from about 520 to 580 A.D., and 
towards the close of its occupancy the city of Chichen Itza 
was founded by the Chanes, a branch of the Maya, destined 
later, under the name of Itzas, to become the most prominent 
nation in the New Empire. In their march northward along 
the east coast of Yucatan from Bacalar to Chichen Itza, 
the Itzas no doubt founded the first city of Tuluum, where, 
nearly a thousand years later, their descendants founded 
the later city, whose ruins, shrouded in bush, now overlook 
the Caribbean Sea from this desolate coast. 

This migration was led by Lakin Chan, a priest 
and leader, deified under the name of Itzamna after 
his death, and later to become perhaps the most widely 
worshipped hero god throughout Yucatan. It is from him 
that the Chanes, whom he led in person, derived their later 
name of Itzas. Meanwhile other tribes of the Chanes related 
to the Itzas, wandering up from the south, founded the 
great cities of Motul and Izamal. 

Towards the end of the seventh century A.D. the Itzas, 
for some reason unknown to us, suddenly left their capital 


96 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


city of Chichen Itza, migrated in a south-westerly direction 
across the peninsula to Champoton, on the west coast, 
where, having conquered the inhabitants, they settled 
down in the land, completely abandoning the magnificent 
palaces and temples, on the erection of which they must have 
expended a vast amount of time and labour, as their ruined 
remains prove to-day. 

The Itzas remained in Champoton for nearly three hundred 
years, when, towards the close of the tenth century A.D.— 
again apparently without rhyme or reason—they returned 
to their old city of Chichen Itza, which they rebuilt and 
reoccupied, many of them remaining behind at Mayapan, 
where they founded a new city of that name, later to become 
the capital city of the New Empire. 

During the passage of the Itzas back to Chichen, a second 
immigration was taking place into Yucatan from the 
westward of a tribe called the Tutul Xiu, under the leader- 
ship of the chief, Ahmekat Tutul Xiu. They came from 
Chiapas and Tabasco in Mexico, and spread over the southern 
and western parts of Yucatan, founding the cities of 
Xkabukin, Kaba, Labna, Uxmal, and many others, and 
finally, at Chichen Itza, coming in contact with the Itzas. 

Towards the end of the tenth century A.D. the colonisa- 
tion and transitional periods of the New Empire were 
over. 

For five centuries a stream of Maya immigrants had been 
pouring into Yucatan from the south and west, till practically 
the entire peninsula was now occupied. The people had 
become accustomed to their new environment ; the constant 
shifting and changing from one locality to another had 
ceased. They were settling down to build themselves 
permanent cities, which provided an outlet for the expression 
of their artistic and architectural ideals so long denied by a 
nomadic life in a new and sterile environment—in fact 
the Great, or Renaissance Period, of the New Empire had 
commenced. 

About 1000 A.D. the three great cities of Uxmal, Chichen 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 97 


Itza, and Mayapan, each ruled by its independent governor, 
formed a triple alliance, by the terms of which each was 
to participate equally in the government of the country. 
This alliance lasted for nearly two hundred years, until the 
last decade of the twelfth century, A.D. It marks the high 
tide in the prosperity and artistic development of the 
Maya of Yucatan, and constitutes their golden age, during 
which most of the innumerable cities—now mere masses 
of ruins buried in the bush—were built and flourished ; 
a period of unparalleled artistic development in both the 
painters’ and the sculptors’ art, and under wise, beneficent 
rulers a period of peace and prosperity, free alike from 
internecine wars and dissensions, and from invasion from 
without. 

During this period there entered Yucatan from the west 
a great priest and leader known as Cuculcan (or feathered 
serpent). He is described as a venerable old man with a 
long white beard, dressed in a loose robe and sandals. After 
a residence in Yucatan of some years, preaching peace, 
concord, and well-doing, he left it by way of Champoton, 
promising, however, that in after years he and his followers 
would return. 3 

The coming of the Spaniards (teules, or gods, as they were 
termed by the Mexicans) was—unfortunately for them- 
selves—regarded by the natives as the fulfilment of this 
prophecy. 

Cuculcan soon after his departure underwent an 
apotheosis, and with the other great priest and leader, 
Itzamna, already referred to, divided divine honours about 
equally throughout the land. The disruption of the triple 
alliance, the plunging of the whole country into war, and 
the end of the golden age, was brought about by an event 
which is to a certain extent wrapped in mystery, as no 
two accounts of it exactly coincide. The quarrel—a 
matter of cherchez la femme—arose between Chac-Xib-Chac, 
King of Chichen Itza, and Hunnac Ceel, King of Mayapan. 


It would appear that the latter was deeply enamoured of 
GL 


98 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the Princess who was betrothed to the former. Notwith- 
standing this, however, he attended the wedding ceremony 
with a number of his followers. At the conclusion of the 
feast, while the retainers of the King of Chichen Itza were 
lying about on the mat-strewn floor sleeping off the effect 
of their potations of balché (the Maya wine, on which it was 
considered good form to get intoxicated after a feast), 
according to the usual custom, the King of Mayapan, 
with a party of armed men, invaded the bridal chamber 
and bore off the bride. Chac-Xib-Chac, on recovering 
from his debauch, was naturally incensed at such a base 
betrayal of hospitality by a friend and ally, and at once 
began to collect his people with a view to making war on 
the King of Mayapan. He was joined by the rulers of 
Izamal and Ulmil, two smaller cities, but the King of Uxmal 
wisely kept out of the quarrel between his allies. 

The war at first went strongly in favour of Chac-Xib- 
Chan, till at length Hunnac Ceel, finding himself on the verge 
of defeat, called in to his assistance Toltec mercenaries 
from the Mexican provinces of Chiapas and Tabasco, 
adjoining Yucatan on the west. With their assistance he 
rapidly overcame the King of Chichen Itza, and drove him 
from his city, killing and enslaving many of his subjects, 
and driving the rest out to the sparsely-populated eastern 
coast of the peninsula, where for years they led a miserable 
and hunted existence. 

On the fall of Chichen Itza and the dissolution of the triple 
alliance the supreme command of the country fell into the 
hands of the Cocomes, the ruling family of Mayapan. The 
city of Chichen Itza was handed over by them to their 
Toltec mercenaries, in consequence of which we find here 
in the more recent buildings, the strongest Toltec architec- 
tural influence of any city in Yucatan. For nearly two 
and a half centuries the Cocomes succeeded, chiefly by the 
aid of their warlike Toltec allies, in holding the overlordship 
of the peninsula. The ruling families and nobility of each 
district were compelled to have some of their members in 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 99 


: 


residence as hostages at Mayapan all the year round, 
where, within a great walled enclosure, ground was allotted 
to each for the construction of their temples and palaces, 
while outside the walls the vast number of their stewards, 
personal retainers, and attendants, with their families, 
formed a respectable sized city in itself. 

About the year 1450 A.D. the Maya nobles, disgusted with 
the arrogance of the Cocomes, humiliated at being compelled 
to reside within the precincts of Mayapan, and oppressed 
by the heavy taxes, payment of which was enforced by the 
Toltec invaders, at last entered into an offensive alliance 
against their enemies, and under the leadership of the 
reigning Tutul Xiu, King of Uxmal, declared war against 
the Cocomes. Hostilities were carried on with varying 
fortunes for a number of years, till in Katun 8 Ahau, or 
1468 A.D., the army of the Tutul Xiu besieged and captured 
the city of Mayapan, completely razing it to the ground, and 
putting to death every member of the Cocom family, with 
the exception of one son, who was absent in Honduras, 
and a distant relative, Cocom Cat. 

After the conquest of Mayapan the whole country became 
divided up into a number of small cacicazgos, or states, 
each governed by a separate cacique, or ruler, over whom 
the King of Uxmal exercised a merely nominal suzerainty. 
Even the last surviving Cocom, returning from Honduras, 
was permitted to set up a cacicazgo at Sotuta, his principal 
town being Tbuloon. Ah Moo Chel, a priest of Mayapan, 
who had married his high priest’s daughter, fled to the east 
after the sacking of the city, with a considerable number of 
retainers, where round Izamal he founded the cacicazgo of 
Ah Kinchel. Nine brothers of the Canules, a Toltec tribe, 
retired to Acanul, where they founded the cacicazgo of that 
name, though, being regarded as outlanders and barbarians, 
they were not permitted to intermarry with their Maya 
neighbours. Noh Capal Peck, a lord of Mayapan, fled to 
the north, where he founded the cacicazgo of Ceh Peck. 

The Cupules, a Maya tribe, returned and ruled in Chichen 


100 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Itza, while the Itza themselves retired en masse to Peten, 
in Guatemala, the former home of their ancestors, and there, 
under the name of Peten Itzas, formed the last important 
stronghold of the Maya Indians against the Spanish invaders, 
by whom they were not conquered till the last decade of 
the seventeenth century. 

The Tutul Xiu returned to their strongholds in the 
Sierra, but for some inexplicable reason deserted their 
capital of Uxmal, perhaps the largest and most beautiful 
city, and certainly that containing the most exquisitely 
sculptured buildings throughout Yucatan, as its wonderful 
remains still evidence to-day. They retired to the insignifi- 
cant town of Mani, leaving the vast temples, palaces, and 
public buildings of their capital completely deserted, as 
they were found nearly a century later, to be the wonder 
and admiration of the first conquistadores. 

Yucatan was now divided into a great number of caci- 
cazgos, all engaged in almost constant strife one with 
another. The Cocomes of Sotuta, the Tutul Xius of Mani, 
and the Cheles of Ticoh, were mortal enemies ; the Peches 
of Motul were at war with the Cheles and Cupules, as were 
the Cochuas of Tehomeo with the Chanes of Bacalar. 
These internecine wars continued till the coming of the 
Spaniards. Nevertheless, so rapidly did the population 
increase that at the time of the conquest, in the words of 
one of the congustadores, “the whole country appeared 
like a single pueblo,” while ‘throughout the whole of 
it there is not a palm of land which has not been 
cultivated.” 

It must be remembered that though split up into so 
many small states at the time of the conquest, the people 
of Yucatan were in reality all of one race, speaking one 
language, and descendants of the two tribes who, as we 
have seen, originally entered the peninsula, the one from 
the south-east, the other from the south-west. The Chanes 
(the tribe from the south-west), at the coming of Itzamna, 
changed their name to Itzas, and ultimately overran the 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND IOI 


eastern part of Yucatan. The Tutul Xiu from the south- 
west settled in the Sierra and western part of the peninsula, 
forming later, with the Itza, the confederation of Mayapan, 
and it is from this last name that people, country, and 
language derived their title of Maya. 

We claimed by right of discovery the honour of rechristen- 
ing this ancient Maya city, and opinions were divided 
between “ The City of the Wounded Deer” and “ The 
Stronghold of Soldier Crabs”? as suitable names. On 
discovery, however, that the former, when rendered into 
Maya, is “ U kahal tsonan ceh,”’ while the latter is still more 
impossible as a place name, we compromised by naming it 
“ Chacmool ”’ in honour of the tutelary deity of the place. 

These ruins almost certainly date back to the period 
between the fall of Mayapan, in the middle of the fifteenth 
century, and the coming of the Spaniards about a century 
later. They are of the same type as all the other ruins 
along the east coast and on the islands, and were evidently 
the work of Maya, strongly imbued, as the Chacmool 
indicates, with Toltec culture. The masonry is coarser, 
and lacks the finish noticeable in the earlier Maya building. 
Sculpture is absent, and stucco takes the place of cut stone. 
They are, in fact, evidently the work of a considerable 
body of people suddenly thrown into a new environment, 
who endeavoured to construct as quickly as possible temples 
and other buildings as closely resembling those they had 
left behind them as might be compassed with the materials 
at hand. Whether they would ever again have reached 
the architectural or sculptural perfection of the Great Period 
is doubtful, as a subtle degenerative change, moral and 
artistic, seems to have eaten into the life of the Maya, 
beginning nearly three and a half centuries before the 
arrival of the Spaniards, manifesting itself in architectural 
and artistic decadence, in the development of cruelty, 
treachery, and pugnacity, and the introduction of human 
sacrifices, amongst this once peaceful, happy, joyous, 
religious people. 


102 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


The fall of the Maya civilisation, though possibly has- 
tened by, was not due to, the coming of strangers, but to 
something inherent in itself—possibly the fact that for 
nearly fifteen centuries it had come in contact with no 
outside influence, and of its own initiative had apparently 
neither advanced nor retrograded, a stationary condition 
in human affairs as repugnant to the high gods as a vacuum 
in nature, for no civilisation can mark time for ever. 

We spent two strenuous days clearing bush, measuring 
and photographing buildings, Morley and I sleeping ashore, 
while the others returned at night to the Lian Y. We 
were supposed to be at the height of the dry season, yet 
on both the nights we slept at the edge of the beach it 
rained briskly, saturating our beds, bedding and mosquito 
curtains. We both felt, however, that anything was 
preferable to the oily roll of the Lilian Y, the nearest she 
ever attained to stability even anchored inside the reef. 

Interesting and exciting as the work had been, we were 
not sorry when it was finished, for between sleepless nights, 
hard-driven days, and Hubert’s unspeakable cookery (his 
omelettes were like greasy leather, and his beans things to 
dream of—in a nightmare !), we were nearly allin. More- 
over, the heat in the low-lying, bush-encircled ruins was 
terrific, while the aborigines—mosquitoes, bats, and soldier 
crabs—united in their efforts to eject us from the rooms and 
temples, till even the Lilian Y seemed a haven of rest as, 
on the morning of the 16th February, we weighed anchor 
and bade a long farewell to the city of Chacmool. 

The tops of the ruins could easily be distinguished from 
the mast-head as we steamed out, standing sentinel-like 
above the bush, and gradually diminishing in size as we 
left them further and further behind, and so, after the 
first visit from strangers in nearly five centuries, the silence 
of the bush closed down once more over this once flourishing 
town, to be broken only by the scream of a parrot and the 
howl of a monkey. 

It seemed incredible that thousands of people had once 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 103 


lived here, loving and hating, marrying and giving in 
marriage, fighting their enemies, worshipping their gods, 
bartering with their neighbours, sowing and reaping their 
crops, holding their feasts and fasts, rejoicing and mourning, 
and at last dying, and leaving no trace beyond the ruins of 
_ their city, the very name of which is now forgotten. It 
brought home to us the impermanence of all human institu- 
tions and the insignificance and futility of human effort. 

From this melancholy reverie of the past Morley and I 
were aroused by the strains of ‘‘ Oh, Johnnie! Oh, Johnnie ! ” 
started by Held in the unspeakable gramophone, and the 
smell of burning beans resulting from Hubert’s efforts to 
prepare breakfast. 


CHAPTER VII 


Camp out at Nohku—Arrival at Tuluum—The Town first sighted by 
Grijalva in 1518—Revisited by Stephens in 1841—Subsequent Visits— 
Reading the Date on the Stele—The Castillo from the Sea—Difficulties 
in Landing—We find no Trace of the Stele—Landing the Camping 
Outfit—We Camp in the Castillo—Description of the Castillo—An 
Uncomfortable Night—We Find the Stele—Description of the 
Sculpture on the Stele—Maya Chronology. 


ON resuming our journey north we put in at Point Nohku, 
the southern lip of Ascension Bay, as we had heard that 
the ruins of an old Spanish church were to be found there. 
Disappointment, however, awaited us, as the ruin proved 
to be that of a small Maya temple, or shrine, such as have 
already been described. It was in a very bad state of 
preservation, and in this lonely and desolate situation had 
probably been used by fishermen, hunters, or travellers 
as an altar upon which to sacrifice to their tutelary deities. 

The name Nohku in Maya means “ ancient temple,’ and 
might, of course, refer equally well to a heathen temple 
or a Christian church. 

We camped out that night on the sandy beach under the 
stars, about three miles north of Ascension Bay, and with a 
tiny breeze gently swaying our mosquito nets, the aromatic 
smells of the bush coming faintly to our nostrils, and the 
lapping of the little wavelets on the shore forming a gentle 
lullaby, we realised what a paradise Yucatan may be under 
favourable conditions. 

Next morning we were under way early, and about 10.30 
a.m., passing in through an opening in the reef, we anchored 
under the ruins of Tuluum. 

These ruins are by far the largest and best preserved of all 
the groups known to us up to the present along the east 
coast of Yucatan and amongst the adjacent islands. A 
certain air of mystery—partly, no doubt, due to their 

104 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 105 


inaccessible position—has always clung to them, investing 
them with a special interest in the eyes of students of Maya 
archeology. The first European notice we have of Tuluum 
is found in the itinerary of Juan de Grijalva’s voyage along © 
this coast in 1518, kept by Padre Juan Diaz, chaplain to 
the expedition. He writes: 


“ After leaving Cozumel we ran along the coast a day 
and a night, and the next day towards sunset we saw 
a bourg, or village, so large that Seville would not have 
seemed larger or better. We saw there a very high 
tower. There was upon the bank a crowd of Indians, 
who carried two standards, which they raised and lowered 
to us as signs to come and join them, but the Commander 
did not wish it.” 


The distance from Cozumel, the high tower, and the size, 
point unmistakably to Tuluum as the “ bourg, or village, 
so large that Seville would not have seemed larger or better ”’ 
of Grijalva. 

For the next 324 years the history of Tuluum is a blank, 
till in 1841 it was revisited by the American explorer, 
John L. Stephens, who discovered on the floor of one of the 
temples the fragments of a stele, or monolith, covered with 
Maya hieroglyphs. <A few years after Stephens’ visit com- 
menced the so-called “‘ War of the Castes.”” The Maya 
Indians, driven to desperation by three centuries of oppres- 
sion and slavery, rose against their Spanish masters through- 
out the whole peninsula, and drove them into Merida, the . 
capital. When, with great cruelty and loss of life, the 
revolt had been quelled, the Indians still held a large 
territory along the east coast, where they have retained 
their independence to this day. 

Tuluum is near the centre of this region, and, as the 
Indians allowed no white persons within their territories, 
was not visited during the seventy years between 1841 
and 1911, which fact has no doubt added greatly to the 
mystery and romance surrounding the ruins. 


106 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


The next visitors were Dr. Howe, of the Peabody Museum, 
and his companion, Mr. Parmalee, who in 1911 reached 
Tuluum in a small sailing vessel from Cozumel. They 
spent parts of two days at the ruins, obtaining a few rather 
inadequate photographs, and then, seeing fire signals at 
night, and observing Indians creeping about the bush 
during the day, they became convinced that an Indian 
attack was imminent, and, having no means of resisting it 
with their small party, they beat a hasty retreat. 

Two years later the ruins were visited by Messrs. Morley 
and Nusbaum, who made the journey from Cozumel in a 
sailing dorey, and arrived nearly dead from sea-sickness. 
Their dorey was swamped in the tremendous surf, which 
always pounds the shores of Tuluum, and all their equipment, 
photographic and otherwise, was ruined ; but, worst of all, 
on visiting the temple where Stephens had found the sculp- 
tured stele in 1841, which Howe had seen in 1911, they 
found it missing, and left the ruins disgusted, after a stay 
of only five hours. 

A short time subsequent to this I met Parmalee in London, 
and Morley met Howe in Washington, and both learnt 
almost simultaneously that shortly before leaving the 
ruins they had conveyed the fragments of the stele from the 
temple where Stephens found them to the beach, with a 
view to their transportation to New York, but, being 
surprised by the Indians before they could get them on 
board, were compelled to abandon them, first burying — 
them in the sand near high-water mark in a little bay to 
the north of the Castillo. 

Morley and I, each provided with a plan of the location 
of the fragments, met on a fruit steamer on our way to 
Belize—the nearest port of embarkation for Tuluum and 
arranged a joint expedition, which took place in March, 
1916, and was so far successful that we discovered and 
disinterred the fragments, and, placing them in position, 
got an excellent photograph of the monolith as it now is, 
which enabled us to make out with reasonable certainty 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 107 


the Initial Series date recorded upon it—g9.6.10.0.0. 8 
Ahau 13 Pax, or approximately 304 A.D. 

We found five fragments on the beach, where Parmalee 
and Howe had buried them, while two smaller fragments 
still remained in the temple where Stephens had found them. 

On leaving Tuluum in 1916 we buried the fragments in 
the sand of the same little bay, near a pyramidal outcrop 
of the limestone, easily recognised. 

Later in the year I commissioned the captain of a turtle- 
fishing schooner to put in at Tuluum on his trip down the 
coast and bring out the fragments. As far as we knew 
he had done so, but the schooner was unfortunately lost 
with all hands somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tuluum 
in the great hurricane which swept the coast in 1916, and 
sent her, with many another vessel, to the bottom, so our 
only hope of seeing the stele again lay in the vessel having 
foundered before she had an opportunity of taking it on board. 

Tuluum from the sea presents a forbidding and inhospit- 
able aspect. Upon the summit of a gaunt, naked, limestone 
bluff, honeycombed into all sorts of fantastic designs by 
the ceaseless action of the sea, stands the Castillo—a high 
rectangular tower, with lower wings on each side, all pre- 
senting blank, windowless, doorless, grey limestone walls 
to the sea, and buried in a dense growth of the scrubby 
bush which covers this part of Yucatan. Landing at the 
ruins is always difficult, and in anything like a strong 
breeze absolutely impossible, as the opening in the reef is 
narrow, and in rough weather impassable, while even on 
the calmest day the surf pounds on this ironbound shore 
with incredible force, upsetting one’s boat into a maelstrom 
of swirling, eddying water, with a sandy bottom from which 
project sharp fangs of limestone rock at frequent intervals. 

Warned by previous experiences, we anchored the pram 
about twenty yards from shore, opposite the southern of 
the two small sandy bays which indent the high bluff above 
and below the Castillo, and, stripping to our drawers and 
undershirts, jumped overboard and waded ashore, being 


108 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


ultimately spewed gently up on all fours by a great breaker 
on the sandy beach. 

The southern bay, though it looks more dangerous, is in 
reality far safer than the northern, which for fifty yards 
out is protected by a chevaux de frise of jagged rocks. 
Morley and I at once climbed the tortuous, rocky path to 
the top of the bluff, made familiar during our former visit, 
and made a beeline through the ruins at the land side of the 
Castillo to the small northern bay, where we had hidden the 
precious fragments of the stele, only to find them gone— 
evidently removed by the captain of the turtle-schooner, 
and now presumably lying with him somewhere at the 
bottom of the Caribbean Sea. 

Greatly depressed, we returned to the southern bay to 
superintend the landing of our camping outfit—a ticklish 
business, as everything had to be carried ashore on the 
men’s heads from the pram, which was dancing about on 
the breakers like a cork, while a slip or toe stubbed on a 
hidden rock by the porter meant a wetting for some part of 
our precious outfit. 

At length everything was safely landed, and the question 
arose as to whether we should make our camp on the sandy 
beach or within the Castillo. I was in favour of the former 
site, as being handy for a sea bath at all times, and saving 
the back-aching job of transporting our huge impedimenta 
up the steep bluff, and then up the still steeper steps leading 
to the Castillo. Morley, however, from the purely senti- 
mental motive of wishing to camp in the building where the 
great American explorer Stephens had camped seventy-five 
years previously (very uncomfortably, it must be admitted, 
if his account is to be credited), was in favour of the 
Castillo, as wasalso Held. Thither, therefore, followed by all 
hands carrying bedding, food, cooking utensils, photo- 
graphic outfits, arms, etc., we betook ourselves. 

The Castillo was probably the principal temple of the 
city. It stands upon the crest of the bluff, its back to the 
sea, its front facing the land and the city. It is an elaborate 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 109 


structure on three different levels, the two-roomed building 
on top, approached by a broad flight of steep stone steps, 
probably representing the chief sanctuary of the entire 
group. The great stairway is thirty feet wide, with twenty- 
four extremely steep steps, and remains of stone balustrades, 
now much broken up by the roots of trees, which have 
grown over the entire stairway. The sanctuary has an 
entrance divided into three by two stone columns. Above 
each are square recesses, each of which at one time contained 
a painted stucco figure in high relief, though only that in 
the central one now remains. The interior is divided into 
two rooms, each 26 ft. long, the front one 6ft. 6ins. broad, 
the back one oft. On each side of the doorway leading 
from one to the other are inset stone rings, probably for the 
support of the rod for the curtain which screened the entrance 
to this Holy of Holies. The roofs of both chambers are 
formed by the same corbel arch already seen at Chacmool. 

The columns at the main entrance are specially note- 
worthy, as they are in the form of serpents, the rattles 
of the tail held upwards along the side of the building, the 
heads projecting forward at right angles from the bases 
of the column, which are formed by the bodies of the snakes. 
These serpent columns are of great importance in dating 
the city, as they are purely Toltec, or Mexican, and were 
not introduced into Yucatan till the thirteenth century, 
while at Chichen Itza, the Toltec stronghold, they are found 
in great number and perfection. 

The wing ranges are much lower than the central building, 
from each side of which they project symmetrically. Their 
upper stories, now much ruined, were, unlike most Maya 
buildings, flat roofed, the sapodilla wood roof beams being 
upheld on circular stone columns, which still remain, 
surrounded by fragments of the fallen-in concrete roof, 
which, when the sapodilla rotted, soon collapsed, owing to 
its great weight. 

These wings are approached on each side by flights of 
short stone steps on each side of the main stairway, which 


IIo IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


lead to the platforms upon which they stand. The plat- 
form in front of the temple at the top of the main stairway 
was covered with a thick growth of small bushes armed with 
long, sharp thorns, in each of which dwelt a particularly 
vicious and pugnacious ant, who at the least disturbance 
sallied forth to attack the invader. 

We set George to cut down these bushes, and he 
remarked of the ants, that “‘ they were putting fire into his 
meat.’’ The bush cut down and burnt, I erected my cot 
on the platform, while Morley and Held set theirs up in 
the front room of the temple. 

At our last visit we had thoroughly cleared the great 
stairway of bush, for photographic purposes, but it was 
now covered with a vigorous secondary growth of young 
trees ten to fifteen feet high, in which a small colony of pretty 
little blue birds had settled, and were fighting furiously over 
the fruit of a gigantic wild papaw rooted at the base of the 
stairway, whose top just reached the level of my cot, giving 
me an excellent view of the proceedings. 

Morley and Held were justified in their choice of a 
sleeping-place, as during the night it came on to pour with 
rain, and, before I could get them into the temple, blankets, 
cot, and mosquito curtains were saturated, while a horrible 
mix-up took place in the dark front chamber between the steel 
frame of my net and Held’s curtains, which blocked the entry, 
resulting in much torn muslin and mutual recriminations. 

Next morning, after tea, Morley set off with the pilot to 
explore the ruins. I went to renew my acquaintance with 
the painted stucco, while Held, with youthful optimism, 
took Muddy and a couple of shovels down to the little 
sandy bay where we had hidden the fragments of stele, 
with the belated hope that they might after all be there. 
On returning to lunch at midday we were greatly rejoiced 
to hear that Held’s “‘ hunch ”’ had been justified, and that 
he had actually found two fragments buried beneath a 
mountain of sand well above ordinary high-water mark, 
as poor Peter Vasquez, the turtle-fisher whom I had 





PLAN SHOWING PRINCIPAL TEMPLE GROUP AT TULUUM, 
PAR IIALLY (RESTORED: 


[p. 109 





TULUUM : TEMPLE WITH ROOF COMB. 


[p. 125 


| -— ) tio % 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND III 


commissioned to bring them away, had considered Tuluum too 
dangerous an anchorage to be visited even for a considera- 
tion of 100 dollars ; yet had he only put in for the stone the 
delay would probably have saved him and the whole Ship S 
company from destruction by the hurricane. 

After a frugal lunch on tomato omelette prepared by 
Muddy—Hubert had been, by general consensus of opinion, 
disrated as cook, and, being useless as a sailor, had reverted 
to his normal status as loafer—we all set off to the bay, and 
before night succeeded in recovering all the lost fragments, 
with the exception of the smallest, to search for which in 
that vast accumulation of sand would have been like 
looking for a needle in a straw stack. 

These great masses of stone, some several hundred pounds 
in weight, had been rooted up from the place where we had 
buried them, cast like corks well above high-water mark, 
and then buried beneath a mountain of sand. All this had 
evidently been accomplished by the hurricane and tidal 
wave, and it gave us a more realistic idea of their gigantic 
force than all the wrecked buildings, piers, and ships which 
we had seen along its course. 

We searched very carefully within the temple where 
Stephens had first found the fragments, but without success. 
On the platform surrounding it, however, amongst a lot of 
ordinary stones we found two considerable-sized pieces which 
had probably been left behind by Parmalee and Howe in 
Igi1, one of which, as will be seen, proved to be possibly 
the greatest treasure-trove of the entire expedition. The 
fragments, when assembled, form a monolith 3ft. wide, 
8ins. thick, and at present 8ft. long, but as it has been broken 
off from its base—which is lost—the exact original length 
is impossible to determine. It was, however, probably in 
the neighbourhood of roft. The stone is cut from the 
native limestone of the Tuluum cliffs, and piercing it are 
two large circular natural holes, which had probably 
originally been filled in with cement, over which the carving 
was continuous. Upon both faces of the monument are 


112 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


sculptured human figures, slightly larger than life-size, 
very elaborately dressed. The one on the Initial Series 
side holds in both hands a two-headed ceremonial bar, or 
sceptre, the commonest emblem of authority found in 
Maya sculpture. He wears an enormous and elaborate 
feather headdress, with highly ornamental breastplate 
and maxtli, or apron, a network with lozenge-shaped spaces, 
probably of beads, over the legs, and flame-shaped objects 
projecting on either side from the waist. Both figure and 
glyphs on the reverse side are in very low relief—in fact, 
hardly more than deep scratches on the surface of the stone. 
On both sides the glyphs are presented in two vertical 
panels, one on each side of the central figure, connected 
by a single horizontal panel across the top. 

The stone is very much weathered and defaced by its 
centuries of exposure, but fortunately the Initial Series 
date inscription—the most important part from our point 
of view—is perfectly plain and legible. 

A short explanation is necessary of the Maya calendar in 
order to understand this and the other inscriptions which 
we found later. 

The Maya of the Old Empire measured time by the passage 
of so many cycles, katuns, tuns, uinals, and kins from a 
certain fixed date. The kin, or lowest unit, was a day, and 


is represented by the sign @. 


This uinal, or month, containing 20 days, by the sign C.J. 


The tun, or year of 360 days or 18 uinals, by the 


sn 


The katun, or 20-tun periods, by the sign panty 


while the cycle, 20 katuns, or 144,000-day period, slightly 
more than five years under four centuries of our time, is 
represented by the sign "9. 


wes 
All these signs may be, and frequently are, in the inscrip- 
tions replaced by grotesque heads, differing for each period, 


(ATION 


to 


MONTHS OF THE MAYA YEAR, 


G8 OE 


t go Tent 
éImix ik Akbal & ehichan | CGim 


Chuen 


Caban @) Cauac 6) 
sesh 


DAYS "OF THE MAYA YEAR, 








ip. rr 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 113 


known as head variants, while the signs themselves are 
known as the normal forms. 

The Maya numerals from I to I9 were represented by 
varying combinations of two elements, the dot . represent- 
ing I, and the bar representing 5; thus .. . stood for 3; 
= — for 12, and === for 19, while 0 is expressed by the 
sign CG ; 

These are known as the normal forms, and may be 
compared to our Roman numerals. In addition, however, 
each number from 1 to Ig is frequently represented 
by a grotesque head, which may be considered as the Maya 
equivalent of our Arabic notation. 

The Maya also divided time into years of 365 days, made 
up of 18 months of 20 days each and one month of 5 days. 

The months were named as follows (Maya symbol) : 














Pop Zac 
Uo Ceh 
Zip Mac 
Zotz Kankin 

— Tzec Muan 
Xul Pax 
Yaxkin Kayab 
Mol Cumhu 
Chen Uayeb (5 days) 
Yax 

The days were named 

Imix Chuen 
Ik Eb 
Akbal Ben 
Kan Ix 
Chicchan Men 
Cimi Cib 
Manik Caban 
Lamat Eznab 
Muluc Cauac 
Oc Ahau 


II4 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


To each day sign was prefixed a number from I to 73, 
these numbers following each other in endless succession. 
The position occupied by the day in the month was also 
given, and as there were 20 days to each month it is obvious 
that the day could occupy one of 20 positions. These 
were not expressed, however, as by us, in terms of current 
time, for we say first, second, third, etc., January before 
the first, second, and third days of that month have actually 
elapsed; the Maya spoke only in terms of time elapsed, 
as we do in reading the clock, consequently the first day 
was 0, the twentieth was 19. 

The starting-point of the Maya chronology was a certain 
day 4 Ahau, occupying position 8, in the month Cumhu, 
written thus: 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu. To illustrate the sequence 
of the dates let us follow the days for a month from this 
date : 


4 Ahau 8 Cumhu 
5 Imix g Cumhu 
6 Ik to Cumhu 
7 Akbal tr Cumhu 
8 Kan 12 Cumhu 
g Chicchan 13 Cumhu 
to Cimi 14 Cumhu 
rr Manik 15 Cumhu 
12 Lamat 16 Cumhu 
13 Muluc 17 Cumhu 
t Oc 18 Cumhu 
2 Chuen 19 Cumhu 
3 Eb o Uayeb 
4 Ben 1 Uayeb 
5 Ix 2 Uayeb 
6 Men 3 Uayeb 
7 Cib 4 Uayeb 
8 Caban o Pop 

g Eznab 1 Pop 

Io Cauac 2 Pop 

tz Ahau 3 Pop 

12 Imix 4 Pop. 


13 Ik 5 Pop 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND II5 


It will be seen that. the thirteen numerical coefficients 
of the days, the days themselves, their positions in the 
months, and the months, follow an endless succession. 
Every 18,980 days, or 52 years, the day 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, 
or, in fact, any date came round again ; consequently this 
period was named a “‘ calendar round.” It may be likened 
to a gigantic cogwheel, with 18,980 named cogs revolving 
throughout all time. The number of cogs between any 
two given ones is always the same, and at each complete 
revolution of the wheel, whatever cog one started from 
must recur again. 

The Maya started their chronology from a cog named 
4 Ahau 8 Cumhu. 

After every Initial Series date the day in the calendar 
round upon which it fell is almost invariably given as a 
check on the correctness of the Initial Series ; for example : 





The above Initial Series is taken from a stele at the ruins 
of Quirigua, in Guatemala. It reads: ‘‘g Cycles, 18 
Katuns, 10 Tuns, o Uinals, o Kins; ro Ahau, 8 Zac’’— 
which, being interpreted, means that this stele was set up 
9 cycles, 18 Katuns, 10 Tuns, no months, and no days, after 
the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, and that this date fell upon a 
certain day 10 Ahau 8 Zac in the calendar round. Now 
if we reduce 9.18.10.0.0. (generally written thus for 
brevity) to days we find that it contains 1,429,200, and if we 
divide this by 18,980—the number of days in a calendar 
round, we find that it goes 75 times, leaving a remainder of 
5,700 ; in other words, 75 calendar rounds and 5,700 days 
have elapsed from the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu to the date 
recorded by the Initial Series 9.18.10.0.0., and if we count 
forward 5,700 cogs on the great wheel from the cog 4 Ahau 


116 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


8 Cumhu we shall find that we come to the cog named 
ro Ahau 8 Zac, proving that the entire date is correct. 
When several dates were recorded on one monument the 
Maya frequently made use of what is termed a Secondary 
Series. Let us suppose that the Initial Series ended on a 
day 5 Imix g Cumhu, and after this we find recorded 


“ke °@ NE) 0. 


On referring to the glyphs it will be seen that these represent 
1 Uinal r Kin 13 Ik 5 Pop; the meaning being that 1 Uinal 
and 1 Kin (i.e. 21 days) after 5 Imix 9 Cumhu occurred the 
date now recorded—i.e. 13 Ik 5 Pop, and if 2r days be 
counted forward from 5 Imix g Cumhu, it will be found to 
fall on 13 Ik 5 Pop. This saved the repetition of the 
Initial Series for each date, and often a number of dates 
are recorded on a monument in this way ; they are known as 
secondary dates, and the periods which indicate their 
distances from the Initial Series date, as I uinal r kin above, 
are known as distance numbers. 

The Initial Series and Secondary Series were the only 
methods of dating used by the Maya of the Old Empire. 
They were perfectly simple and perfectly accurate, but, it 
must be admitted, somewhat clumsy and cumbersome. 
In the New Empire, throughout Yucatan, they soon fell 
into desuetude, and only three Initial Series dates have 
been found in the peninsula, as against many hundreds on 
monoliths throughout the southern cities. Of these three, 
one is at Tuluum, one at Chichen Itza, and one at Xcan- 
chacan. | 

In the New Empire three distinct methods of recording 
time were employed : 


1. The Calendar Round.—This merely gave the position 
of the day in the calendar round, as 4 Ik ro Pop, which 
fixed the date accurately amongst the 18,980 days of the 
calendar round, or within a period of 52 years; but as one 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND I17 


rarely knows to which calendar round it refers, such a form 
of dating is practically useless to us, unless other dates are 
found upon the same stele, or in the same temple, which 
accurately fix the calendar round referred to. 

2. Period Ending Dating.—This consisted in recording 
the occurrence of an event as taking place at the end of 
some particular period in the long count ; that is, in time as 
measured by the Initial Series. This method involves 
two, and usually three, factors: 

(a) The name of the period at whose end the event occurs, 
i.e. cycle, katun, or tun. 

(6) The calendar round date on which it fell; as 6 Ahau 
13 Cumhu. 

(c) A sign or element meaning ending, or it is ended, 
signifying that the period had come to a close. 

Three signs are used in this last connection. 


1 & 3 
G38) 

The first and third of these are never used by themselves, 
but invariably to modify some other sign; the hand, on 
the contrary, is rarely used to modify period glyphs, but, 
connoting ending in general, is used in various connections, 
one of which is to indicate the completion of a building, 
when printed in red paint on its walls. 


Simple examples of these period ending dates are: 
Qs Cc, Cc. 


£ as ¢., 
° of) lls EEG) 2 ° 
ise te tee 
Is ve 
In Inscription 1, glyph (a) shows first the ending sign, 
and following this the cycle sign with the coefficient 9, the 
whole indicating the end of Cycle 9, (0) is the day Ahau, 
with the coefficient 8, and (c) the month Ceh, with the 
coefficient 13 ; the whole inscription reading 8 Ahau 13 Ceh, 
the end of the Cycle 9, and as this date can occur 


118 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


practically but once in all time, it is fixed with absolute 
accuracy. 

Inscription 2 reads (a) the end of Katun 14 (note the 
small ending sign above the numerical coefficient) falling on 
(0) 6 Ahau (c) 13 Muan, and as this date can occur but once 
in Maya historic times, there can be no ambiguity about it. 

But this period ending system was variously employed, 
and the accuracy of the dates depends largely on the 
number and nature of the factors present. Sometimes a 

day is given as falling within a certain tun, as 3 Chicchan in 
Tun 7. Now every Tun 7 contained a day 3 Chicchan, and 
every Tun 7 recurred every 19.71 years, consequently such 
a date was useful only in indicating a certain day within 
a period of 19.71 years. The most usual method, as we 
found in Yucatan, was the recording of a certain tun with 
the day upon which it ended; as, for example, Tun 13 
ending in the day 2 Ahau. Such a date occurred only 
once in 256.26 years, and as most of the New Empire sites 
were occupied for less than 500 years from their foundation 
to their destruction, it is never necessary to distinguish 
between more than two possible readings, while almost 
invariably only one is historically probable. 

By adding the day of the month in the above method, as, 
for example, Tun 11 ending on the day 2 Ahau 18 Xul (a 
date found by us at Chichen Itza), accuracy within a period 
of no less than 1,870 years was secured. 

Another method even more accurate than the preceding 
is practised on the rings of the ball court at Uxmal, where 
the calendar round date is given as 10 Ix 17 Pop, falling 
within a Tun 17 which ended in the day 12 Ahau, a date 
which could only recur once in 243,193 years. 

The U Kalay Katunob, or procession of the katuns, was 
much less accurate than any of the preceding. It is the 
method employed in the books of Chilam Balam, or Maya 
historical records handed down after the Conquest, and 
consists merely in numbering the katuns, or 20-years 
periods, from 1 to 13 in the following sequence: 12, Io, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 119 


8, 4, 2, 13, II, 9, 7, 5, 3, I. It is obvious that an event so 
recorded, unless the tun, or year, be given also, may occur 
anywhere within a period of one katun, or approximately 
20 years, and further that, as 30 x 20 =260, every 260 years 
each katun will recur. As a matter of fact, however, the 
tun or year of the katun on which the event occurred is often 
given, an event being described as occurring on the second 
tun of Katun 13, just as we might describe the commence- 
ment of the Great War as taking place in the fourth year of 
the second decade of thenineteenth century, and on historical 
grounds it is usually easy to select the particular round of 
13 katuns, or 260 years, on which any recorded event 
occurred. 

It may be accepted that the year 1537 A.D. corresponded 
to the end of Katun 13 in the procession of the katuns, for 
it is recorded in the book of Chilam Balam that the death 
of a certain chief, Napot Xiu, occurred in a Katun 13 Ahau, 
while yet 6 tuns were lacking before the end of the katun, on 
the day 9 Imix, and the chronicler further states that the 
event took place in the year of our Lord 1537. 

Now the date 13 Ahau of the new notation corresponded 
to the Initial Series date 12.9.0.0.0., i.e. 12 cycles, 9 katuns, 
o tuns, 0 uinals, and o kuns after 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the 
starting-point of Maya chronology. Therefore 12.9.0.0.0. 
of the Old Empire=Katun 13 Ahau of the New Empire = 
1537 A.D. of the Christian era. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Possible Explanations of the Initial Series Date on the Stele—The Mystery 
Solved—The Wall encircling the City Watch-towers—Use of Walled 
Cities—Impossibility of Starving the Garrison of the City—Discovery 
of New Buildings within the Walls—Types of Buildings Found— 
Stucco Figures—Mexican, Maya, and Christian Religions—Mural - 
Paintings—The Only Calendar Hieroglyph found at Tuluum— 
Resemblance of the Figures of the Gods on the Stucco to those of 
the Dresden Codex—Destruction by the Spaniards of the Maya 
Books—Origin of the Dresden Codex—Gods worshipped at Tuluum— 
Tuluum and Chacmool Compared—Human Sacrifice—Non-arrival of 
Desiderio Cochua—Silence of the Ruins—Reflections on Tuluum. 


THE photograph shows all the pieces of the stele found by 
us, placed together, and upon it the Initial Series is clearly 
recognisable, though somewhat defaced by time and weather. 
In glyph 1 is seen the coefficient $f] or nine in front of 
the grotesque head variant for the cycle; in glyph 2 the 
coefficient } in front of the grotesque head variant for 
the katun; in glyph 3 the coefficient {] in front of the 
head variant for the tun; in glyph 4 the coefficient 

or 0, in front of the head variant for the uinal; and in glyph 6 
the upper part of the same zero coefficient in front of the 
day sign, which has been broken away. The whole inscrip- 
tion then reads 9.6.10.0.0.0. or 9 cycles, 6 katuns, Io tuns, 
O uinals, o kins, after 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, and if this be worked 
out it will be found to coincide with a date 8 Ahau 13 Pax 
of the calendar round. Now the calendar round day always 
follows immediately at the end of the Initial Series, and 
should occupy the vacant position shown for glyph 6, 
which has been broken away, but in glyph II we recognise 
very clearly the month Pax, with the coefficient 13, the 
whole date then reaching 9.6.10.0.0.0., 8 Ahau 13 Pax. 


Nothing could be clearer than this date, which corresponds 
I20 


10 


i Gee 


12 


13 


14 





TULUUM. 


Front of Stele, showing in glyph 1 the coefficient 9 (one bar and four dots which are 
partially obliterated), with the head variant of the cycle sign (immediately above glyph 
1 is the Initial Series introducing glyph, very much weathered), glyph 2 the coefficient 6 
with the katun head variant, glyph 3 the coefficient 10 with the tun head variant, 
glyph 4 the zero coefficient with the uinal head variant, glyph 5 the upper part of the 
same zero coefficient, the lower being broken away. Glyph 6, which should be the day 
sign, is gone, but in glyph 10 the month sign, 13 Pax, is very plain. The whole reads: 
9.6.10.0.0 (8 Ahau) 13 Pax. The last two glyphs, 13 and 14, were, as may be 
seen, found and joined on later. 13 is the sign for the Lahuntun or ro Tun period, 
14 is the day Ahau preceded by the coefficient 7, i.e., 7 Ahau the end of a Lahuntun, 
which carries the contemporary date of the Stele from 9.6.10.0.0. exactly one cycle 
forward to 10.6.10.0.0., or in Christian chronology from 305 A.D. to 699 A.D. 


[p. 120 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 121 


approximately to 305 A.D. of our era. But we know from 
a number of historical sources that Tuluum and Chichen 
Itza were not founded till towards the end of the sixth 
century of our era by Maya from. Bakalal, led by their 
Priest-Chief Itzamna. How, then, reconcile the discre- 
pancies in these dates? Three explanations were possible, 
all equally unsatisfactory : 


(1) The stone might have been carried by the Maya from 
one of their older cities, but as the limestone was obviously 
exactly similar to that of the Tuluum cliffs, and the stone 
weighed many hundreds of pounds, this did not sound 
convincing. 

(2) The date of the Initial Series may have referred to 
some former event in the history of the Maya, and so not 
have been contemporaneous, but in that case, judging from 
the analogy of all other Initial Series dates, a Secondary 
Series contemporary date would have been given. 

(3) The whole explanation of the Initial Series system of 
dating is wrong; but this is untenable, as all the dozens 
of inscriptions which have been deciphered by means of 
it work out to a day with absolute precision. 

This problem had occupied Morley’s and my own mind 
ever since our first visit to Tuluum. We had talked it over, 
and evolved endless hypotheses, each more unsatisfactory 
then the last, in explanation of it, yet in five minutes after 
the discovery of the extra fragments of the stele outside 
the temple where it had rested the whole thing was made 
perfectly clear to us. This fragment, it will be seen, fits 
on immediately below the Initial Series inscription, and on it 
are sculptured the two glyphs shown below. 





122 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


The upper one is the glyph for the lahuntun, or period of 
Io tuns, the lower the coefficient ‘qf or 7, prefixed to a not 
uncommon face-variant for the day Ahau, the whole 
reading 7 Ahau, the end of a lahuntun. Now this date 
occurs exactly one cycle or 20 katuns after 9.6.10.0.0., the 
date recorded by the Initial Series, so that the contem- 
poraneous date of the stone is 10.6.10.0.0., or 699 A.D., 
which fits in perfectly with the record of the books of Chilam 
Balam. The question next arises, 699 A.D. being the con- 
temporaneous date of the stele, what does the date 305 A.D. 
so carefully recorded by the Initial Series refer to? And 
to this I think there can be but one answer. It records some 
important event in the previous history of the Maya, 
possibly some great victory or battle, or possibly the date 
of their setting out on their wanderings north from the 
southern city of their origin. The stele, in fact, corresponds 
very closely in idea to a statue of Columbus erected to com- 
memorate the fourth centenary (or cycle, as in Tuluum) of 
the discovery of America, upon which are inscribed the date 
of the event commemorated, 1492, and the current date, 1892. 

This stone has a curious history. Erected in 699 A.D., it 
represents with one exception so far as is known the very 
last Initial Series date throughout the whole Maya area. 
When exactly the city of old Tuluum was deserted by its 
inhabitants we have no means of knowing, but the next we 
hear of the stone is its discovery in fragments by John L. 
Stephens in 1841, on the floor of one of the temples of the 
new city, which with other east coast towns was probably 
founded about the middle of the fifteenth century. Whether 
the later Maya retained any tradition or written record of 
the city founded by their ancestors 800 years previously, 
which influenced them in returning there; whether they 
knew of the existence of the stele, or came upon it by 
accident ; how it got broken ; where the missing fragments 
have disappeared to; why it was placed in a temple of its 
own, are points which will probably never be cleared up. 

The principal buildings at Tuluum are surrounded by a 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 123 


wall on the north, south, and west sides, the east side being 
guarded by the precipitous cliff overlooking the sea. The 
wall encloses a space 1,500ft. long north and south, 
and 6o0o0ft. east and west. The area included, measuring 
about 22 acres, is now covered with dense tropical bush, 
which renders one building invisible from the next. It is 
built of rough blocks of stone, the height varying, owing 
to the rolling contour of the ground, from Ioft. to 15ft. 
The top is level, and sufficiently wide to admit of four men 
walking abreast upon it. The sides are pierced by five 
narrow passages to admit of exit and entry. At the north- 
western and south-western corners are watch-towers built 
upon the summit of the wall, r2ft. square, each containing 
a small altar. When the country was clear of forest they 
must have commanded a magnificent view for many miles 
over its flat expanse, but now they look out to the west, 
far as the eye can reach, over an unbroken sea of almost 
impenetrable virgin bush, and to the east over the deserted 
city, shrouded in a veil of bush almost as dense. No more 
will the guard be changed in these watch-towers, no more 
the password be given to enter the city by the passages, no 
more will the alarm be sounded of an enemy in sight, and 
the women and children collected from the surrounding 
villages within the fort, while the men arm themselves for 
the fray, and prepare to repulse the invader from the north, 
or the cannibal black Carib from the sea. Citizen and 
enemy alike lie silently side by side without the deserted 
city walls, awaiting their last summons, unless, indeed, 
their spirits may return to re-enact the episodes of their 
former life on its now desolate stage ; to live and strive, to 
love and hate, and perhaps with ghostly hosts to refight in 
bloodless battles the sanguinary conflicts of their earthly life. 

Mayapan is the only other city in the Maya area, so far 
as is known, surrounded by a wall, but the Tuluum wall, 
though shorter, is more carefully constructed, and higher 
than that of Mayapan. The object of these walls was prob- 
ably twofold—to surround and isolate from the common 


124 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


people sacred buildings, temples, pyramids, dance platforms, 
and priests’ dwellings, and in time of war to act as a fort, 
in which the inhabitants from the surrounding districts 
could take refuge. At Mayapan the first was probably the 
predominating reason, as we read in contemporary accounts 
that the vassal nobles to the rulers of Mayapan, with their 
families, lived within the walls with the higher priests, 
while their retainers formed a city of their own without. 

At Tuluum the wall was mainly defensive, as is shown 
by the watch-towers standing upon it, and by the presence 
of narrow passages, with off-sets, passing through it, for in 
the unsettled state of the country immediately following the 
fall of Mayapan every man’s hand was against his neighbour, 
and the city was subject to attack on the landward side 
from neighbouring petty states, and from the sea by Carib 
pirates. It would probably have been easy of defence 
against enemies armed only with bows, arrows, and javelins, 
while starving the garrison out would have been practically 
impossible, for the only food the fighting man of that day 
required was a small ration of maize to make into corn 
cakes, vast stores of which were no doubt always kept in 
the fort, while unlimited water, somewhat bitter in taste, 
but quite fresh and drinkable, was to be obtained from a 
cenote, or natural well, close to the north wall. 

During our first expedition to Tuluum we located eighteen 
buildings within the enclosure, to which on this occasion 
we added two good-sized temples to the north of the Castillo. 
It is quite possible, however, that a complete clearing of the 
bush from the space within the walls would disclose further 
edifices, as it is at present so dense in places that one may 
stand within a few yards of a building without perceiving it. 

Outside the walls we came across ten buildings, chiefly 
small temples, distributed irregularly round the walls, 
and for all one can tell there may be many more, as the 
bush is even heavier and more impenetrable outside than 
inside the walls. The buildings fall naturally into three 


groups : 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 125 


(r1) The single story structure with a flat roof, corbel 
vaulted ceiling, one or more cornices ornamenting the 
outside, covered internally and externally with hard stucco, 
similar to those we have already seen at Chacmool and 
Espiritu Santo, but in Tuluum very much larger and more 
carefully constructed. The photograph shows one of these 
structures from which the outside coat of stucco has all 
been peeled off, as it stands unprotected on the very edge 
of the cliff, where for five centuries it has encountered the 
full force and violence of the prevailing easterly wind hurtling 
in from the Caribbean Sea. This building is the only one 
at Tuluum, or, indeed, amongst the whole of the east coast 
ruins, which possesses a roof comb, or ornamental projection 
from the flat roof—a feature extremely common, and some- 
times, in the form of a flying facade, greatly elaborated 
amongst the older ruins in the north of the peninsula. 

(2) The second class of building consisted of flat-roofed, 
concrete-ceiled chambers, such as are seen in the buildings 
forming the wings of the Castillo. These were roofed in 
with beams of sapodilla wood resting on circular stone 
pillars, and covered with a layer of hard concrete. All of 
these have collapsed owing to the decay of the wooden 
beams, and consequent falling in of the concrete roofs, 
all that now remains being masses of great flat pieces of 
concrete, showing casts of the beams which upheld them 
scattered about between rows of pillars. This type of roof 
is very uncommon in the Maya area, the most usual form 
for stone houses being the corbel vault already described, 
and in structures too large to admit of this beams covered 
with palm-leaf thatch, supported on rows of stone columns, 

(3) An example of the third type of building found in 
Tuluum is shown in the photograph. It consisted merely 
of a low, rectangular structure, with columned entrance, 
supporting on its roof a similar but smaller building, with 
a single door in front. Both buildings are ornamented 
with a double cornice, and both are covered inside and out 
with extremely hard resistant stucco, Over the entrance 


126 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND | 


of the lower story are two niches which held stucco figures 
of warriors. These had been very carefully executed, the 
limbs and bust being first roughly modelled in pottery, over 
which the stucco was applied, and afterwards painted in 
red, black, blue, and green. Over the entrance to the upper 
story is a panel containing a similar figure ; all are, however, 
unfortunately greatly mutilated. These figures, remains of 
which are found in niches above the entrances of several 
other buildings at Tuluum, are probably intended as 
representations of the gods to whom the temples were 
dedicated. Whether they were destroyed by the Maya to 
prevent their desecration by the Spaniards when they 
saw that their conquest by the latter was inevitable, or 
by zealous but bigoted priests, who saw in every endeavour 
of the Maya to return to their ancient arts of painting, 
sculpture, and hieroglyphic writing evidence of the handi- 
work of el diabolo, to be sternly and incontinently repressed, 
it is now impossible to tell. 


Into the bright and joyous religion of the early Maya, 
whose beneficent gods asked only offerings of fruit, flowers, 
prayers, and incense in return for those gifts which all 
mortals seek of their gods, was infused the black, cruel, 
gloomy religion of Mexico, with its bloodthirsty priests and 
its savage, obscene deities demanding hecatombs of human 
sacrifices. On this was grafted, three centuries later, 
the brand of Christianity introduced by the Spanish monks— 
hard, fierce, zealous men, most of them without real sym- 
pathy or kindliness, always at handgrips with the devil 
for the souls of their unfortunate converts, whose bodies 
they were ready to sacrifice, and often did sacrifice, with 
torture, flogging, and fire, to ensure the eternal salvation of 
their souls. Unhappy Maya! Joyous, peaceful, care-free, 
art-loving children of nature, fate indeed dealt hardly with 
them. Nor is it to be wondered at that the poor remnant 
left to-day, gloomy, taciturn, secretive, with a religion 
combining the worst superstitions of three irreconcilable 


Lo ‘d] QcI *d] 
‘ovonys pojuted YIM pozelooep JOLIE} UT ‘SUIPTINd PeL10}s-OMT, 
‘WOANTAL 


‘ssuryured [ye A, wory freq Teruouet1a9g Surpfoy poy jo ain8y pe}eIs 


WOOTOL 








IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 127 


faiths, should hide themselves from their conquerors in the 
fastnesses of the virgin bush of Yucatan—last stronghold 
left them in the land which once was theirs. 

At Tuluum are found perhaps the finest, and certainly 
the most extensive, mural paintings now in existence through- 
out the Maya area. They are executed in red, black, blue, 
violet, green, and claret colour on the rock-like stucco which 
covers both the interior and exterior of the buildings. This 
stucco, though thin, is extraordinarily hard and smooth ; 
in fact, it was as much as we could do to chip it with a 
pickaxe. In several places, notably throughout a narrow 
passage which runs beneath the great stairway which leads 
to the Castillo, two, and in some places three, layers of 
stucco have been applied, one over the other, each showing 
traces of the paintings which originally covered it. On the 
outer wall of a building just north of the Castillo, facing 
towards the sea, is depicted a human figure, nearly life- 
size, outlined in black on the white stucco, with elaborate 
feather-decorated headdress, maxtli, or apron, plaited cotton 
breast-plate, and sandals ornamented with bows and tags. 
This figure, notwithstanding the fact that it has weathered 
the storms of over four hundred years, is almost as clear in 
detail as upon the day when it was first painted. In another 
temple within the sacred enclosure are depicted the gods 
Itzamna and Cuculcan. Itzamna, as we have seen, was 
the priest and leader who conducted the Chanes in their 
migration northward from Bakalal, and soon after his 
death underwent apotheosis, and became one of the most 
universally worshipped gods throughout Yucatan. He is 
known as the “Roman-nosed god” from the fact that he 
is usually represented with a prominent Roman nose, and 
is very frequently associated with the symbol of the 
serpent. 

Cuculcan, sometimes known as the “ Long-nosed god,”’ 
was the hero chieftain who led the Tutul Xiu into Yucatan 
from the west, and who, after his death, was also deified. 
His name signifies “‘ feathered serpent,’ and he is also 


128 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


frequently associated with the symbol of a plumed or a 
feather-covered crotalus. 

The whole interior surface of the walls of the chambers 
within the lower story of the two-storied temple is covered 
with paintings of gods, and offerings being made to them, 
with conventional representations of fruit, flowers, jars, 
vases, bows, knots, and geometrical devices. These are 
outlined in blue on a claret-coloured background, and are 
all, unfortunately, in an exceedingly bad state of preserva- 
tion, owing to the damp and mildew which between them 
have effected what the sea storms were unable to do, and 
partly destroyed the iron stucco which covers the walls. 
From the lower story of this temple are shown two panels 
of a frieze, probably the best preserved portion of the whole 
mural decoration. 

The first exhibits the Roman-nosed god, whose head- 
dress is seen to be decorated by two highly conventionalised 
serpents’ heads, while in front of his face is a vase from 
which projects another similar head. He holds in his left 
hand a rope-like object, and is apparently receiving an 
offering of a “‘ceremonial bar’’ decorated with flowers 
from a worshipper who faces him. 

The second shows Ah Puch, the god of death, holding 
in his right hand a “ ceremonial bar,’ the upper part of 
which consists of a plumed serpent’s head. Above this 
is the symbol (§) which, as we have seen, stands for 
Imix, the first day of the Maya month, but it is also 
used to denote maize, the Maya word for which is Ixim. 
This is the only calendar hieroglyph which we were able to 
discover on the mural paintings at Tuluum, and here it is 
used probably, not in its calendaric significance, but merely 
to represent an offering of maize to the deity. 

These ‘‘ ceremonial bars,” or batons, are held in the hands 
of nearly all the figures of gods at Tuluum as symbols of 
their divinity. 

The head of the god of death is, as will be observed, 
double, and was originally covered by an elaborately 


3) 





an 2 UGH, OR THE GOD OF DEATH, FROM TULUUM ; 


BELOW: THE SAME GOD, FROM THE DRESDEN CODEX. 
THE GOD CUCULCAN, FROM TULUUM. 


[p. 128 





I AND 2. THE GODS, CUCULCAN AND ITZAMNA, FROM THE WALL 
PAINTING AT: TULUUM ; BELOW:.3 AND 4. THE SAME GODS 


FROM THE DRESDEN CODEX. 
[p. 130 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 129 


decorated feather headdress, the greater part of which has 
now become obliterated, while all down his back plumes of 
conventionalised feathers are seen projecting. Beneath the 
figures of Itzamna, Cuculcan, and Ah Puch are shown the 
heads of the same gods, as depicted in the Dresden Codex, 
and it will be observed that not only are the representations 
of the gods alike in each case, but that they are practically 
identical ; so much so, indeed, that the conviction is forced 
on one that if not actually the work of the same artist, they 
were at least executed at about the same period, in the 
same locality, and possibly from a common model. 

Now the Dresden Codex (so called because it at present 
reposes in the Landes Bibliothek, formerly known as 
the Royal Library at Dresden) is one of the three priceless 
aboriginal Maya paintings of hieroglyphs which have 
been preserved to us. It is painted in red and black on 
paper made by the natives from the fibre of the Agave 
Americana, or America aloe, and is folded like a map. Its 
hieroglyphic inscriptions and pictures deal with the gods, 
the tonalamtl, or sacred year of 260 days, which of the 
divisions of these are dedicated to the service of each god, 
and the ceremonies appropriate to each of them, together 
with certain obscure astronomical calculations. How or 
when it was originally brought to Europe from the New 
World is not known, but it must have come at a very early 
date, for we know that very shortly after the conquest all 
the books of the Maya were destroyed by the Spanish priests 
as works of el diablo, irrespective of their subject-matter, 
so that at the present day only three examples are left to 
us of the many thousands which originally existed amongst 
the priests, dealing with medicine, the art of prophecy or 
divination, the calendar system, the worship of the gods, 
and the history of the Maya from the earliest times. 

The exact date and place of origin of the Dresden Codex 
are unknown, and have always given rise to a considerable 
amount of controversy amongst students of Central American 


archeology. That it comes from Yucatan and belongs to 
IL 


130 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the New Empire are the only two facts which all admit, but 
in the extraordinary resemblance, indeed the almost exact 
identity between the heads of the gods as shown in the 
Codex and in the mural paintings of Tuluum, I think we have 
a very useful pointer as to both the time when, and place 
where, the Codex was painted. It seems, indeed, fairly 
certain that it was a product of the east coast civilisation, 
and so belongs to the closing years of the Second Empire, 
probably within half a century of the arrival of the Spaniards 
in Yucatan, and, Tuluum being the chief city of this civilisa- 
tion, it is quite likely that the Dresden Codex originated 
here, and may even have been the work of the same artist 
who produced the mural decorations now before us. 

The discovery of the city of Chacmool, and the exact 
dating of the Tuluum stele, would well have repaid us for 
our entire expedition, but when to them was added the 
light thrown on that obscure manuscript, the Dresden Codex, 
we felt that if fortune favoured us with no further discoveries, 
we could not in justice complain. 

The principal gods worshipped at Tuluum were, in order 
of their most frequent appearance on the mural paintings, 
and probably of their popularity amongst the people, 
Itzamna, Cuculcan, Ah Puch (the so-called diving god), a 
curious figure modelled in stucco over several of the temples 
of a god with legs in the air and palms together, pointed 
downwards in a diving position ; Ek Ahau, the black captain, 
a war deity ; and the maize god, or god of fertility. 

The two first of these were by far the most popular, and 
their common symbol, the serpent, in the form of serpent 
columns on the main temple, and ceremonial bars, head- 
dresses, and ornaments on the walls, is to be encountered 
everywhere. 

Curiously enough, the first thing I came across on entering 
the back room of the main temple was a good-sized rattler’s 
discarded skin lying on top of the small altar, which pro- 
jected from the back wall—possibly an offering left by the 
former wearer to his name god. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 131 


Alfredo, our engineer, however, in endeavouring to climb 
to the flat roof of the same temple, had a much more 
unpleasant experience, for in the act of grasping the edge 
of the roof to pull himself up he actually touched a snake, 
which must have been enjoying a sun-bath in this elevated 
situation. The reptile disappeared amongst the weeds 
and low bush covering the flat roof, and, search as we might, 
we were unable to find him, which was rather remarkable, 
as unless he committed suicide on the rocks beneath it is 
difficult to see how he managed to elude us. This inexplic- 
able disappearance of a large snake on the open roof of a 
temple obviously dedicated to a serpent god of course set 
the men’s tongues wagging, for, though a polyglot crew, 
they were all intensely superstitious, and to the believer— 
and even half-believer—in the mystic rights of Obeah, 
practised more or less sub rosa by the negro population of 
all over Central America, the serpent has a peculiar and 
sinister significance. I noticed, moreover, that they gave 
the temple a wide berth after this. 

On comparing the main temple group of buildings at 
Tuluum with that at Chacmool, it will be seen that the 
general arrangement is very similar in each. 

Temple B at Chacmool corresponds to the Castillo at 
Tuluum. Both are divided into a front and back compart- 
ment, on the latter of which a low stone altar is placed 
against the back wall. Both stand on platforms, and are 
approached by flights of stone steps, those of Tuluum being 
far higher and more elaborate, as the platform itself contains 
two ranges of minor temples, or priests’ houses. In front 
of this staircase at Chacmool is the image of the god to 
whom the whole group is evidently dedicated—the Chacmool, 
reclining in his own little temple. 

At Tuluum, however, the temple was dedicated either to 
Itzamna, Cuculcan, or possibly both these deities, and the 
serpent columns of the temple take the place of the image 
of the god. Farther on, and still immediately facing the 
stairway, both at Tuluum and Chacmool, is a dance platform 


132 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


approached by a flight of steps on two sides, where the 
procession of priests halted to perform their religious dances 
on the way to sacrifice in the main temple. Beyond this 
dance platform at Tuluum is an arched opening in the wall 
which surrounds the main temple group, through which 
the procession of priests no doubt filed on its way to the 
sacrifice, just as they filed through the arched doorways of 
the idol’s little temple of Chacmool. 

The sacrifice to the serpent god at Tuluum, carried out 
on the platform in front of the temple, at the top of the 
high, steep flight of stairs, in front of the twin serpent 
images, and in full view of the whole city, right back to the 
walls, must have been a far more imposing ceremony than 
at Chacmool ; indeed, the setting would bear comparison 
with those great holocausts which the Spaniards not infre- 
quently witnessed when fighting hand to hand with the 
soldiers of Montezuma for the possession of the city of 
Mexico, where on the summits of great stone-faced pyramids, 
or teocalli, victims were sacrificed by the hundred to secure 
the favour of the god of war, the hearts torn out of the living 
victims, and the corpses rolled down the steep incline, where 
at the base the onlookers were waiting to tear them in 
pieces, and perform the act of ceremonial cannibalism which 
would endow them with courage from the god to fight the 
hated invader, the whole accompanied by the ceaseless 
booming on the great snakeskin drum sacred to the god, 
which was audible for miles. 

Many a time the conguistadores of Cortez witnessed such 
a scene, and not infrequently saw some of their own com- 
panions, who had been captured by the Mexicans, sacrificed 
to the god, while looking on powerless to assist them. The 
same scenes were enacted at Tuluum, but on a smaller 
scale, though probably long after the Spaniards had become 
firmly established in Mexico human sacrifice was carried on 
in Yucatan, and in this remote region of the east coast, 
which was not at any time very securely under the 
Spanish dominion, it is possible that the ancient rites may 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 133 


have been celebrated up to the middle of the sixteenth 
century. 

At our former visit to Tuluum we rather dreaded a visit 
from the Santa Cruz Indians, whose nearest town is believed 
to be about nine miles back in the bush, though no white 
man has ever been there to tell, but though we found evidence 
that they were watching us, in the form of discarded palm- 
leaf slings, such as they use to carry small game, upon the 
floor of a building which we had carefully swept clean the 
previous day for the purpose of copying some of the mural 
paintings, we never actually set eyes on a living Indian. 
Now, however, we looked out eagerly for signs of Indians 
every day, as our friend Desiderio Cochua, had promised to 
meet us at Tuluum with carriers for the packs, and to guide 
us back into the bush to a ruined city which he assured us 
was far finer and larger, and with more perfect wall paintings 
than Tuluum. We waited three days for him, but, greatly 
to our disappointment, he did not turn up, being, as we 
afterwards heard, unavoidably detained at Central. 

As the time at our disposal was limited, we reluctantly 
made up our minds to move on from Tuluum. We were 
sorry to leave, for the place fascinated while it repelled us— 
the absolute silence which pervaded the ruins, broken only 
by the beat of the surf on the rocky shore, was remarkable, 
as, with the exception of the little blue birds, attracted by 
a wild papaw, a few snakes, and an occasional screaming 
hawk planing overhead, quartering the bush for game, we 
saw no trace of animal life throughout our stay in the ruins. 

The mystery which enveloped these grotesque buildings, 
with their bizarre paintings, the close airlessness of the bush 
and its denseness, which made every step an adventure, 
when one might encounter they knew not what—a few of the 
descendants of the ancient inhabitants, still surviving in 
this unexplored region, their ancient religion and customs 
unaltered, or a band of modern Maya, machete armed, 
dodging silently from tree to tree, to close in gradually on 
their victim, and with sharp cutlasses administer the coup 


134 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 





de grace Then thoughts filled our minds of the terrible 
things which had been done here in ancient days, till the 
human sacrifices, the obscene rights, the torturing of cap- 
tives rose before us as we trod the very spots upon which 
they had been enacted. 

The buildings at Tuluum are, with one or two exceptions, 
connected with the religion of the inhabitants—temples, 
shrines, altars, and dance platforms—though a few of the 
large, flat-ceilinged structures may have served as palaces 
of the kings, or dwellings for the chief priests. Such an 
ageregation of sacred buildings must connote a very con- 
siderable population, and the question at once arises, where 
did they live? The answer is, I think, that, like the 
retainers of the nobles of Mayapan, they lived without the 
walls, in houses of pimento daubed with mud and thatched 
with palm, such as are built by the Maya of to-day, and 
such as leave no trace of their existence after a dozen years. 
A bird’s-eye view of the city must have been a wonderful 
sight at the time of the first coming of the Spaniards—the 
buildings covered with gorgeously painted and polished 
stucco, standing out on the dazzling white background of 
the limestone pavement, and surrounded by the great white 
wall, around which clustered thousands upon thousands of 
the brown bush hovels of the workers, while beyond these, 
far as the eye could reach, spread the fields of tall green 
maize waving in the sea breeze. No wonder Grijalva’s 
chaplain—the first European to see it—describes the city 
as “a bourg so large that Seville would not have seemed 
larger or better.”’ 


CHAPTER IX 


Landing at Playa Carmen—Primitive People—Bartering with the Indians 
—Uselessness of Money—Tobacco Curing—Temples of the Tuluum 
Period—Visiting the Sick—Aguilar, the first European to visit Yucatan 
—Treatment of the First Spanish Visitors by the Natives—Aguilar’s 
Ransom by Cortez—His Opportunities of Learning the Manners and 
Customs of the Natives—Puerto Morelos—A once thriving Settlement 
gone to Decay—lIsla de las Mujeres—Origin of the Name—Monotonous 
Life of the Islanders—Fish Plentiful—Drifting Sand—Reception by 
the Municipality—An Excellent Dinner—Ruins on the South End 
of the Island—A Great Kitchen Midden of the Ancients—lIll-luck 
Attending those who Meddle with the Possessions of the Ancient 
Inhabitants—A Miraculous Cross—Treasure Formerly Buried in the 
Islands of the Caribbean—Island of Cancuen—Set Out in Search of 
Ruins Recently Brought to Light—The Ancient King of Cancuen and 
his Palace—Other Buildings at Cancuen—Buildings neither Fortified 
nor Centralised—No Mention of Cancuen by Early Historians—Ruins 
of El Meco—Unusual Isolation—The Original Temple added to at 
Later Dates—An Uncomfortable Night. 


WE left Tuluum at 10.30 a.m. on the roth, and, after a 
smooth passage through the reef, sailed due north at the 
Lilian Y’s usual rate of about six knots. At noon we passed 
a narrow, tortuous opening in the reef which leads to the 
only landing for Acumal, the village of the northern Santa 
Cruz Indians, and the last settlement to the north of the 
Indios Sublevados, or revolted Indians, as the Mexicans 
call them. We had intended to put in here, weather per- 
mitting, but a strong easterly breeze was blowing, the passage 
looked very narrow and crooked, and the reef on each side, 
with huge waves breaking over it, and churning into a 
maelstrom of foam, very formidable, so reluctantly we 
passed it by for future reference. 

Ten miles north of Acumal we arrived at Playa Carmen, 
a small Maya village said to have been settled by Indians 
from Cozumel. We anchored about a quarter of a mile out, 

135 . 


136 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


while Morley, Held, Muddy, and myself went ashore in the 
pram in the hope of purchasing fresh provisions, as the 
unvarying menu of canned goods and biscuits was beginning 
to pall upon all of us. 

The whole settlement, consisting of about fifty Indians, 
came down to the beach to meet us, and was rewarded by 
the spectacle of the pram being twisted round and dashed 
broadside on upon the sandy beach, while her passengers 
emerged like drowned rats from their immersion under the 
wave which carried herin. This little contretemps procured 
us quite a cordial reception, somewhat similar to that 
accorded the payazo, or itinerant clown, so dear to the heart 
of all Yucatecans, Morley, with his small person, blue eyes, 
long yellow hair, enormous round _tortoiseshell-rimmed 
glasses, expansive smile, and glibly inaccurate Spanish— 
a type so totally different from anything they had ever seen 
before—being regarded as a particularly amusing specimen. 

The houses, a dozen or so in number, stood in groups of 
two and three on a slight ridge a few hundred yards back 
from the sea. They were of the usual Maya type—walls 
of pimento sticks and roof of palm leaves, with a hard- 
beaten earthen floor on which children, pigs, dogs, and fowls 
mixed indiscriminately. At sight of these last our mouths 
watered, but, though we offered gold, silver, and notes, 
we could not purchase a single fowl or egg, nor, though they 
were obviously well stocked, would the owners sell beans, 
tomatoes, or corn cake. As a matter of fact, money is of 
very little use to these villagers, as they have practically 
no opportunity of spending it, being cut off on the landward 
side by a dense belt of impenetrable bush from the nearest 
settlements, while by sea their only communication with 
the outside world is by means of a dorey which sails across 
from the island of Cozumel at very long intervals. Fortun- 
ately for us this dorey had not turned up for several months 
and the people had been for a long time without sugar, 
which they prize highly, as the coffee made of ground parched 
corn which they drink is a particularly noxious compound 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 137 


when unsweetened. This fact inspired Muddy with the 
heaven-sent idea of bartering some of our sugar (of which 
we had a large supply on board intended as a present for 
the Santa Cruz Indians) with them for the fowls, eggs, and 
vegetables we so badly needed. The pram was promptly 
despatched to the ship, and returned with roo lbs. of sugar 
and a box of soap, her beaching being very carefully guarded 
on this occasion. Soon a brisk business was being carried 
on between Muddy and the Indians, as he was the only one 
of the party who could speak Maya at all fluently, and they, 
of course, had no other language. A small calabash of sugar 
and an inch from a bar of soap were accepted in exchange for 
one good chicken or eighteen fresh eggs, and on this basis 
we soon had all the poultry in sight corralled, with the 
exception of one old rooster, who was rejected by reason of 
his obvious age and infirmities. 

We also secured a good supply of tomatoes, beans, and 
tortillas on the same exchange basis, and found that if we 
had only brought a demijohn of rum we might have acquired 
the village, lock, stock, and barrel. 

At each end of this village are small groups of ancient 
temples, a few of which are still in a fairly good state of 
preservation, two of them being used by the Indians as 
drying houses for their tobacco, the leaves of which are hung 
out on liana cords stretched across the stone walls and left 
there to dry in the cool, well-ventilated chamber, which the 
Indians have found by experience to be an ideal curing-house 
forthe weed. All the small temples are typically “ Tuluum 
period ” in style, and practically identical with the temples 
found at Chacmool. The best preserved is oft. high and 
24ft. long, covered both inside and out with smooth, hard 
stucco, ornamented by two projecting cornices, and 
approached by a single entrance, divided into three by 
two circular stone columns. The roof is flat, and the ceiling 
formed by the usual Maya corbel vault. This must have 
been a considerable settlement at one time, as we found 
remains of at least seven temples in the cleared space 


138 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


occupied by the village, and the Indians told us that about 
a day’s march inland there were the ruins of a large town, 
which from their description of the buildings was of Maya, 
not Spanish, origin. 

Much as we should have liked to visit these ruins, we 
decided to leave them till a later visit, as our time was 
limited, the greater part of our work of exploration still to 
do, and, no animals being available, we should have had to 
make use of shanks his mare to reach them. Before leaving 
I was asked to see two sick people, Muddy having informed 
the Indians that I was a doctorah, as the Maya call a medico. 
This ‘‘ ah ’’ was used by the ancient Maya as a masculine 
prefix to signify lord, or ruler, as “ Ah Kin,” “ Lord Sun,” 
* Ah Puch,” “ Lord of Death, “ Ahau,” “ Lord or Chief.” 
It is now, however, almost obsolete, and the only name with 
which I have ever heard it used is as a postfix with the 
Spanish ‘ doctor,’’ which the Maya have adopted into their 
language, doctorah, signifying “‘ Lord Medicine Man ’”’— 
remarkable perspicacity on the part of a decadent people, 
who concede a peerage alone to that profession from which 
in England it is alone withheld. The X, pronounced Sh, 
which is the feminine Maya prefix, is still frequently used as 
a diminutive or endearment prefix to proper names, 
“Petrona,’ for instance, being altered to “ Xpet,” 
‘* Lauriana ”’ to‘ Xlau,’’ and “‘ Maximiliana to!” Amashe- 

I found the sick people were two youths in the last stage 
of chronic malaria—poor skeletons with a covering of yellow, 
shiny skin tightly stretched over their bones, and immense 
wood-hard spleens filling their whole abdomen. Each was 
stretched in a small string hammock, from which he had 
become too weak ever to arise, and both were sadly neglected, 
for, as they had been sick for many weeks, their welcome was 
wearing thin in a community where it is a case of “ Root, 
hog, or die.”” I gave each a good supply of quinine capsules, 
and instructions as to diet and cleanliness, which was all 
I could do, but I left them with no very strong hope of their 
ultimate recovery. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 139 


With calabashes of tomatoes, beans, and eggs, strings of 
tota poste, hard, dry, crisp corn cakes, which will keep 
indefinitely, and bunches of fowls, we made a triumphal 
procession to the shore, again escorted by the entire popula- 
tion, and with expressions of goodwill on both sides pulled 
off to the Lilian Y. 

The Playa Carmen ruins, though comparatively insigni- 
ficant in themselves, possess a decided historical interest 
as they almost certainly represent all that remains of the 
Indian town from which Geromino de Aguilar set out to 
join Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, at the island of Cozumel 
in March, 1519. One of Cortez’ main objects in landing at 
the island was to obtain tidings of the Spanish crew and 
passengers of a caraval which eight years previously had 
been wrecked off this part of the coast, and who were 
reported to be still held in captivity by the natives some- 
where in the interior. For this purpose he despatched two 
brigantines to the mainland carrying Cozumel Indians, who 
agreed to act as intermediaries between the Spaniards and 
the cacique, who was reported to hold the Christians captive, 
together with a great treasure in glass beads, copper hawk 
bells, and similar jewels valued by the Indians. One of the 
Indians also carried a letter from Cortez to Aguilar hidden in 
his long hair, as all were naked. The brigantine waited 
eight days, and then, seeing nothing of either Indians or 
Christian captives, returned to Cozumel and reported their 
failure to Cortez, who, though much chagrined, determined 
to set out without taking any further steps towards their 
rescue. The squadron, however, had not got very far 
from Cozumel when one of the ships sprung a leak, and they 
were compelled to return. Shortly after landing they 
observed a large canoe, paddled by Indians approaching 
from the mainland, one of whom, on landing, asked in 
broken Spanish if he were amongst Christians, and, on being 
answered in the affirmative, promptly fell on his knees and, 
weeping, thanked God for his deliverance. This was 
Geronimo de Aguilar, a Spanish ecclesiastic, who, while on 


I40 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


a voyage from Darien eight years previously, had been 
wrecked on this part of the coast of Yucatan with twenty 
other passengers, and, escaping from the wreck, had 
succeeded in landing on the mainland in the ship’s boat. 
Of the eight, five were at once sacrificed by the cacique of 
the country to his gods—very possibly in the Tuluum 
temple—and eaten, while the rest, being in poor condition, 
were penned up in cages to fatten for a similar fate. They 
succeeded, however, in escaping, and fell into the hands of 
a cacique who was more kindly disposed, in that he only 
enslaved them. At the time of Cortez’ arrival only two of 
these unfortunates survived—Aguilar and a sailor named 
Gonzalo Guerrero, who, having apostatised, took to himself 
Indian wives, wore nose-and ear-rings, had his body 
tattooed all over according to the Indian custom, and 
became a man of some importance in the province of 
Chetumal. He had heard of the arrival of the Spaniards, 
but, being ashamed of his apostasy, his harem, and his 
tattooed face, had declined to make any effort to join them. 
Aguilar, on the contrary, had refused to worship the gods of 
his captors, and had kept his vow of continency as an 
ecclesiastic, though put to tests, according to his own 
account, which might well have tried the fortitude of St. 
Anthony. This trait at length won the grudging admira- 
tion of the Indians, and Aguilar was placed in charge of the 
household of the cacique to whom he belonged—a position 
of some trust and authority. 

When the Indian messengers arrived from Cortez at 
the court of the cacique he was very loth to part with Aguilar, 
and it was only the sight of the rich treasure of glass beads 
and copper ornaments offered as ransom which at length 
induced him to give the latter his liberty. Aguilar at once 
departed with the messengers to the nearest town to Cozumel, 
on the mainland (which can only have been the one now 
known as Playa Carmen), but on arriving there found to his 
great grief and disappointment that the Spanish flotilla 
had sailed the previous day. He determined to wait a 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND I4I 


little while on the coast in case one of the ships put back 
for him, and next day was rejoiced to see the whole fleet 
returning, as related, to Cozumel, owing to one of the 
caravals, which was loaded with cassava bread, having 
sprung a leak. He set out with the Indians at once in 
a canoe for Cozumel, where he found Cortez, to whom in 
his after career he proved of invaluable service as an inter- 
preter between the Spaniards and the Maya. 

Aguilar was a man of some education, and, had he wished, 
could have given us an accurate account of the social life 
and religious customs of the Maya, together with a key to 
their hieroglyphic writing, which would have been of 
inestimable value to antiquarians. The two contemporary 
accounts handed down to us, written by Bishop Landa and 
the Abbé Cogolludo, were compiled some time after the 
conquest, and are records, not of personal experiences, but 
of second-hand information obtained from priests and 
leading men among the natives. Aguilar after eight 
continuous years of life amongst them, must have obtained 
a first-hand knowledge of their habits and customs such as 
no other European ever had an opportunity of acquiring, 
for their whole social and religious system was overthrown 
on the coming of the Spaniards, yet all he cared to record 
was a meticulous account of the numerous and ingenious 
assaults upon his chastity, and the ease with which he 
overcame them all, till one is inclined to think either that 
he is not adhering strictly to the truth, or that he was 
physically incapacitated in some way from indulging in 
those sins which he takes to himself such credit for resisting. 

We arrived about dusk at Punta Maroma, twelve miles 
north of Playa Carmen, and found good anchorage in three 
fathoms, close to the shore, well sheltered by a dry reef. 
Morley and I landed on the sandy beach, where we found 
the ruins of a fisherman’s hut built of palm leaf, which we 
thought of occupying for the night, but on examining the 
interior found it looked so “‘snaky”’ that we put up our 
cots on the beach as usual. 


142 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Next morning, after a somewhat nervous dip in the 
shallowest water we could find (for sharks abound along 
this part of the coast), we rowed on board and set sail for 
Puerto Morelos, where we arrived in a little over an hour, 
having caught 60 lbs. of rock fish on the spinner en route. 
We might as easily have caught 600 Ibs., but it was useless 
to go on destroying fish after we had got as many as we 
required, and the amount of sport in catching rock fish on 
a spinner is practically negligible, for they allow themselves 
to be landed with no more fight than a piece of dead meat. 

Puerto Morelos some years ago was a thriving settlement, 
as the remains of a fine wooden wharf, 300 ft. long, attest. 
The Banco de Londres y Mexico employed 600 chicleros 
here in bleeding chicle, or chewing gum, from the sapodilla 
trees in the hinterland, which was tapped by a light railroad 
running back for over 20 kilometres. They were, however, 
ousted by the Mexican Government, and now the population 
would probably not reach 50 souls in the surrounding 500 
square miles. The rails are slowly rusting away, while the 
pier, which had a great breach made in its centre by the 
hurricane, is slowly falling to pieces. 

On leaving Puerto Morelos we sailed almost due north 
past the island of Cancuen, a long, flat bank of sand covered 
with stunted bush. The mainland to the north of Puerto 
Morelos is even more desolate than that to the south, as the 
scrub which covers the hinterland behind the sandy zone 
gives place to sour grass and swamp. This part of the 
peninsula is entirely uninhabited, and probably forms one 
of the most desolate wastes on the American continent. 

About an hour after passing Cancuen we arrived off 
“Isla de las Mujeres,” or the “Isle of Women,” a long, 
narrow island six to seven kilometres in length by less 
than half a kilometre across at its narrowest. It is rocky 
and precipitous at the southern end, low and sandy at 
the northern. The origin of the name “ Isle of Women ” 
seems somewhat uncertain, and many explanations are 
given of it. On my first outward passage from New Orleans 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 143 


to Belize the captain of the fruit steamer, in pointing out 
the ruins as we steamed close in to the island, informed me 
confidentially that it derived its name from the fact that 
Cortez gathered here a number of native Maya ladies with 
a view to the formation of a harem ; he even supplied harrow- 
ing details. Later the mate (also a storehouse of inaccurate 
information) explained that Alvorado held on the island an 
auto da fé, at which he burnt a number of heretical women 
for the good of their souls. He also was primed with 
information even more harrowing, while an _ intelligent 
passenger vouchsafed the information that Grijalva, who 
passed the island in 1517, found there a colony of 
Amazons who had so little use for men that they never 
permitted them to land. 

In the account given by Bernal Diaz of the expedition 
of Cortez, which he accompanied, he relates that, after 
leaving Cozumel, the fleet was scattered by a storm, but next 
day all reunited, with the exception of one caraval, which 
was discovered windbound in a bay on the coast. Several 
of the soldiers had gone ashore here, and found four temples 
with large idols resembling women in them, which they had 
cast into the sea, “‘ for which reason,”’ says Diaz, “‘ we named 
the place Punta de las Mujeres.” No mention is made by 
any of the contemporary writers of an “ Isla de Mujeres,” 
but, considering the ignorance of geography then prevalent 
amongst the conquerors, there can be little doubt but 
that the point on which these temples stand is the one 
alluded to. 

The principal village is situated near the north end of the 
west side of the island, and formerly possessed a population 
of over 400, now reduced to under 250, owing to the frequent 
migration of the younger people to the mainland settlements 
in search of a more exciting existence. They are—like all 
the islanders and coast people with whom we came in 
contact—a simple, kindly, hospitable, unambitious folk, 
“the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” interested 
solely in their own affairs, vaguely aware that a great war 


144 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


had taken place somewhere in the outside world, but con- 
cerned about it solely in that it had depressed the price of 
turtle-shell, their principal export. Theirs is the simple 
ife reduced to the mth power, and we often envied them 
their care and work-free existence, though, infected by 
the wanderlust microbe, we should probably have been 
bored to tears with the life in a month. 

Fish is extraordinarily plentiful. A net off the wharf 
will take enough for all the family in ten minutes, and we 
actually saw one man shoot a cast net into the sea, standing 
in the back door of his cottage, and haul in a fine catch of 
mullet. 

The streets are covered with fine, loose, white sand, 
which, till one gets accustomed to it, is very tiring to walk 
in. It drifts like snow, and, though the side-walks are 
built of stone, and are very high, it frequently covers them, 
and blocks up the doors, nor would there be any use in 
clearing it away, for millions of tons more remain outside 
to take its place. 

A stranger in “ Mujeres,” as the natives call it, is a rare 
bird, and we were met on landing by the Corregidor, or 
Mayor, with the whole Municipal Council dragging behind 
him, who took us on a personally conducted tour of the 
village. 

The plaza is a concreted square, with an ornate stucco 
basin and fountain in its centre, elaborate enough for a 
place ten times the size. A very well-preserved Spanish 
ship’s cannon of the sixteenth century is exhibited here, 
said to have been left behind by Grijalva in 1517, though 
why he should have abandoned such an essential part of 
his equipment is difficult to imagine. 

Having finished the grand round, we were taken to the 
house of a Spanish lady who made a speciality of catering 
to the few belated strangers who arrived on the island— 
and right nobly she did it, for we looked back with longing 
to this dinner when partaking of the food at many a more 
pretentious hostelry on our trip. It started with luscious 





PLAYA CARMEN : MUDDY BARTERING WITH THE INHABITANTS. 


[p. 136 





ISLASDE MUJERES : ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE ON THE 
EDGE OF THE CLIFF, 


[p. 146 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 145 


thick soup made of conchs and ochras, after which came 
eggs and tomatoes, fried Spanish fashion, with a liberal 
allowance of garlic and chili habanero, and eaten uncon- 
taminated by metal by being scooped up with a dog’s- 
eared tortilla, or corn cake—thin, hot, and just off the fire. 
This was followed by an escabeche of fish freshly pickled 
with sliced onions and chili perpers. Next the fiéce de 
résistance, a roast fowl, follo relleno or “ fowl refilled,”’ 
as the Spanish call it. This was in more senses than one 
the préce de résistance, for the coast seems to produce a 
breed of reinforced rubber fowls which are at no period 
of their career tender. Lastly came pumpkin stewed in 
sugar and cinnamon, topped by a cup of excellent coffee. 
We were not allowed, however, to devote our undivided 
attention to this noble repast, for while we ate the Mayor 
and all the Municipal Council sat round the room gravely 
watching us, discussing ourselves, our appearance, and 
probable business in audible undertones, and asking in- 
numerable questions, a sport in which even our hostess 
joined at her periodical entries with fresh courses. 

After dinner we discovered the reason of our remarkable 
popularity. Though it was well on in Lent, the village 
_ badly wanted to give a fiesta and dance. Now, without a 
decent pretext of some sort this was practically impossible 
to good Catholics. We, however, three distinguished 
strangers, with letters from the Governor requesting that 
we be well entertained, furnished quite an unimpeachable 
excuse. [I am sorry to say we refused to fall in with their 
hospitable plans, as bed appealed to us far more strongly 
than any dance. 

On first arriving at the island we had visited the south 
end, going half the way in the pram and walking the other 
half along a rocky road to the extreme southern point, 
where a precipitous limestone bluff on which the waves 
of the Caribbean dash endlessly, to be hurled back as great 
masses of seething foam and spindrift, forms one of the 


wildest and most picturesque spots along the whole coast. 
KL 


146 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


On this point we found two Maya ruins, both distinctively of 
Tuluum style architecture. One, now almost gone, as 
many of the square stones have been removed to con- 
struct a small lighthouse near by, was a little square 
sanctuary, or adoratorio, of the type already made familiar 
to us at Espiritu Santo Bay and Chacmool. It had a door 
at each side, was supported by a circular column in the 
centre, and differed only from others of the same type in 
that it stood upon a circular, stone-faced, truncated base, 
with short flights of stone steps leading from the ground 
level to each door. | 

The second building, also of typical Tuluum style, is 
built of squared blocks of stone, and covered internally and 
externally with hard stucco. It is decorated by two cornices, 
the upper single, the lower double. The roof is flat, and 
the interior supported by the Maya corbel arch roof. The 
interior is approached by a flight of steps leading to a pillared 
doorway, and is divided into an outer room and a smaller 
inner sanctuary. It stands upon the extreme edge of the 
high limestone bluff, down which half of it has already fallen, 
for the sea is constantly encroaching, and in another century 
or so the building will have been completely swallowed up. 
This is probably the best known Maya temple in Yucatan, 
or at any rate has been seen by the greatest number of 
persons, for the Central and South American fruit boats 
from New Orleans and Mobile pass within a few miles, and, 
perched upon the summit of this high cliff, it forms one of 
the most conspicuous landmarks along the whole coast, and 
it may have been from this very temple that the soldiers of 
Cortez, 400 years ago, threw down the stone female idols 
over the precipice into the sea. Indeed, were one to go to 
the expense and trouble, they could no doubt find these 
same idols buried in the débris of centuries at the foot of 
the cliff, when a norther is blowing and the tide is low. 

On returning to the little village along the shore we came 
upon a gigantic kitchen midden composed almost entirely 
of conchs and other shells, amongst which were quantities 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 147 


of potsherd of all shapes and sizes, some belonging to 
artistically painted vessels of fine thin ware, others to rough 
clay cooking-vessels. Amongst them I picked up a clay 
bead and a small net-sinker. It would almost seem as if 
this had been a communal rubbish-heap for the whole 
settlement in ancient days, as we found no other in our 
wanderings, and on its east side stood a tiny stone sanctuary 
similar to, but even smaller than, the one at Espiritu Santo, 
which led us to suppose that even such a prosaic operation 
as the disposal of rubbish was not carried out by the Maya 
without some sort of religious ceremonial. 

On returning to the village I went my usual round of 
the houses, hunting for cosas de los antiguos—trelics of the 
ancient inhabitants, such as I make at every newly-visited 
remote place in the Maya area. The people said that they 
came across great numbers of these on the mainland—idols, 
pots, flint and obsidian weapons and implements, etc., 
when making their corn plantations, but never brought them 
home, as it was extremely unlucky to meddle with the 
belongings of the old gods, who always revenged themselves 
on those who did. 

I was shown an empty house outside the village, which 
had belonged to a man who had brought home several 
“idols,’”’ or large incense burners, with the figure of the god 
to whom they were dedicated sculptured on them. This 
man and his whole family had died of some unknown disease 
within a few weeks of each other, and their deaths were, of 
course, attributed to the idols. The latter were thrown out 
into the yard, where Muddy and I, after diligent search 
amongst the sour grass and rank vegetation which had grown 
up since the owners’ death, succeeded in finding them, but, 
alas! so broken up and scattered that it was impossible to 
piece them together again. 

In one of the houses belonging to an old lady I espied 
upon the domestic altar a plain unadorned cross, which, 
amongst the other objects—gaily decorated with coloured 
ribbons, artificial flowers, religious medallions, and pictures 


148 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


—seemed somewhat incongruous. It was about r6in. high, 
and rather crudely cut from light porous volcanic rock. 
The explanation of its presence which the owner gave was 
that some fifty years previously, when she was a young 
girl, she dreamt for three nights in succession that a star 
of dazzling light hovered over a certain part of her parents’ 
yard, remained undimmed for a few moments, and then 
faded gradually away. After the third recurrence of this 
dream she told her parents of the matter, and they, greatly 
excited at the prospect of discovering treasure of some sort, 
at once started digging in the place indicated, where, at a 
depth of a couple of feet, they came upon this stone cross, 
which had been retained in the family ever since as a much 
venerated heirloom, though the treasure-hunters must have 
been considerably disappointed at finding neither gold nor 
silver. 

These islands from the early sixteenth to the early nine- 
teenth century were the haunt, first of buccaneers, and later 
of pirates, who made use of their shallow, dangerous, in- 
tricate waters, full of reefs and shoals, as a sure place of refuge 
from their enemies and pursuers. Untold treasure must 
have been hidden on their cays and reefs in the old days, 
which the owners, slain in a fight with some prospective 
prize, wrecked at sea, or reaping the just reward of their 
industry on the yardarm of a British frigate, never returned 
to collect. Hardly an islet but is pointed out as the deposi- 
tory of some pirate’s hoard, and not infrequently bullion, 
in the form of doubloons and guineas, and even pieces of 
plate and jewels, have been washed out by the encroaching 
sea, or accidentally unearthed in the course of excavations. 
Such treasure-trove, however, is, for obvious reasons, not 
widely advertised by the lucky finders at the time. 

We left Mujeres at 9.30 a.m., and, sailing south-west, 
arrived at the Boca de Nisucte, the opening of the shallow 
lagoon which separates the island of Cancuen from the 
mainland. Cancuen is long, narrow, and flat, nearly ten 
kilometres in length by less than one kilometre broad in 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 149 


places. Its eastern part is merely a sandbank, while the 
western and central portions are covered with scrub and 
high forest growth interspersed with patches of swamp. 
Till quite recently it had been entirely uninhabited, with 
the exception of a few temporary fishermen’s huts along the 
eastern shore, but a few years ago an enterprising Meridano 
started cutting the bush and planting coco-nuts, and, 
finding that they did well on the island soil, he has now 
felled nearly the whole of the bush, leaving exposed a great 
number of ruins, all belonging to the east coast or Tuluum 
type, none of which were previously known to archeologists, 

Anchoring the Lilian Y at the mouth of the narrow strait 
which separates Cancuen from the mainland, we got out 
the pram, and, after an hour of hard cranking, which 
exhausted everyone before the day’s work began, we started 
up the strait against a current so swift that the pram could 
only just stem it. The strait was fortunately short, how- 
ever, and soon debouched into a long, shallow lagoon. 
Sailing along this for about five miles, keeping close to the 
west coast of the island, we passed a number of Indian 
mounds (probably temple and burial mounds) and a few 
buildings completely in ruins. Near the south end of the 
island we arrived at a rustic landing-stage, where amongst 
the coco-nut trees we found the bush house of the manager 
of the plantation, who kindly consented to accompany us 
to the southern point of the island, where the most perfect 
ruins were to be found. The walk was a very pleasant one 
at first, leading through the shady coco-nut grove, passing 
picturesque little groups of labourers’ huts built of sticks 
and thatched with palm leaf, from whose doors wild-looking 
half-clad Indians, with their still wilder-looking women- 
kind, stared at probably the first really white people they 
had ever seen. This rapidly gave place to a part of the 
plantation where the trees were young and the grass and 
bush high, and where we soon began to feel the intolerable 
itching of red bug attacking our legs, and gradually advanc- 
ing upwards. Finally we arrived at a section where clearing 


150 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


was still going on, and where progress of any kind over the 
fallen bush and great tree-trunks became difficult. It was 
here, however, that we came across the best preserved 
building on the island, known grandiloquently to the 
labourers—the only people who had seen it—as “‘ El Palacio 
del Rey.”’ Itis an oblong structure, built of squared stones, 
26ft. 5in. long by 7ft. 6in. high, covered inside and out 
with hard cement, and entered by two doors, each 2ft. 4in. 
broad. The interior is divided into two long, narrow rooms, 
or corridors, one in front, one behind, by a partition wall 
having three doorways in it. The exterior is surrounded 
above the doors by an ornamental cornice, and in a recess 
in this cornice, just between the doors, stood—or rather 
squatted—the stucco figure of the King of Cancuen, “ El 
Rey de Cancuen,”’ which gave the building its name. Till 
quite recently this figure, the head and bust of which were 
life-sized, the arms and legs comparatively dwarfed, had sat 
enthroned over the doorway of his palace, undisturbed for 
four centuries. Unfortunately a mischievous Mexican 
peon had, with labour incomprehensible in one of his class 
—except when engaged in some work of iconoclasm—pried 
the “ King ”’ loose and tumbled him down on the ground, 
smashing the limbs and lower part of the body beyond 
hope of repair, but fortunately leaving the head and head- 
dress very little injured. The face, which is very well 
(though roughly) modelled, is cruel and malignant in 
expression ; the nose is large and broad, the mouth wide, 
and the forehead high—by no means typically Mayan in 
cast. The headdress consists of broad flaps falling on each 
side of the large circular ear-plugs, attached above to two 
projecting bands which come down to the centre of the 
forehead. Above these is seen the head and upper jaw, with 
projecting teeth, and the large eyes of some mythological 
animal, attached to the forehead of which by a tenon is an 
ornament now so weathered as to be unrecognisable. The 
whole figure had been painted in various colours, but these 
are now almost entirely obliterated by time and exposure, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND I5I 


The Mexican, we were informed, had died very painfully 
within two weeks of his act of vandalism, his death being 
looked upon by the other labourers as a direct visitation 
of the wrath of the ancient god for desecration of his sanc- 
tuary ; and who shall say that his death, however brought 
about, was undeserved ? 

Undeterred by the fate of the Mexican, I arranged with 
the manager to have the head brought over to the landing- 
place by some of the labourers, from whence, on my return, 
I could carry it away on the Lilian Y, as I greatly feared 
that it might be smashed by some of the Indians, or carried 
off by a curio hunter. To this he was quite agreeable, and, 
in fact, rather pleased at getting rid of a relic with such a 
sinister reputation, not without some slight pecuniary 
profit to himself. Unfortunately, I was unable to call at 
the island on the return journey owing to contrary winds 
and tides, so presumably £/ Rey still rules over his ancient 
kingdom of Cancuen. 

Just south of El Palacio were the ruins of two good-sized 
buildings ; one of these 37ft. 2in. by 23ft., was entered by 
a broad doorway divided into two by a square stone column. 
The interior contained but a single room, and the roof, 
formed of the usual Maya arch, was supported by three 
circular stone pillars. The second building was very 
similar to the first, except that its broad entrance was 
divided into four by three square columns. 

The largest building we discovered at Cancuen was 
situated about half-way between El Palacio and the landing- 
place. It was 77ft. 5in. in length by 25ft. broad, the sur- 
rounding wall, decorated all round by a narrow stone 
cornice, being 11ft. 2in. high. This structure stood on a 
low stone mound, or pyramid, now a mere mass of ruins. 
It was probably the market-place or assembly hall of the 
town, corresponding very closely to the market-place 
already described at Chacmool. Nearly the whole front 
of the building is open, and was divided into nine entrances 
by eight circular stone columns. Running down the centre 


152 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


of the interior, midway between the back wall and the 
entrance, is a second row of ten stone columns, which, with 
those in front, evidently served to support the roof, pro- 
bably made of palm thatch laid over wooden beams. It 
will be seen that the chief difference between this structure 
and the corresponding one at Chacmool is that the latter 
stands on a well-defined terraced stone platform, and is 
open both front and back, while the former stands on an 
insignificant low mound, and is completely closed in by a 
wall behind. 

We passed great numbers of ruined temples and build- 
ings all along the coast of Cancuen, together with 
innumerable mounds, probably the burial-places of caciques 
and chief priests of the ancient inhabitants. There was, 
however, no attempt at centralising the main buildings and 
raising them on platforms for defensive purposes, as at 
Chacmool, or of surrounding them by a wall, as at Tuluum. 
On the contrary, they seem to have been dumped down 
anyhow, and strung out over probably a couple of miles of 
coast, which rather leads one to suppose that the inhabitants 
depended rather on the isolated situation of their island 
home than on any special fortification, for defence against 
their enemies. Surrounded moreover by the sea, from 
which a very large proportion of their food supply must 
have been drawn, they were probably first-rate sailors, 
and in a war with their quarrelsome neighbours of the main- 
land would elect to fight by sea rather than by land. 

Contemporary history is silent as to the dwellers in this 
city of Cancuen. It was probably founded, however, by 
the same Maya who were driven out of their own country 
after the conquest of Mayapan, and settled along the east 
coast of the peninsula, as the architectural style is without 
doubt that of Tuluum. Both Cortez and Grijalva must 
have sailed close to this island on their first voyages to 
Mexico, and, if they passed by day, the white stucco-covered 
buildings and temples must have been clearly visible to 
them, and would undoubtedly, one would imagine, have 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 783 


provoked a visit to the natives, whom they had found so 
friendly at other points along this coast, if only for the sake 
of proselytising, which, after treasure (though a long way 
after, it must be admitted), was ever the chief aim of the 
conquistadores. None of them, however, mentions Cancuen, 
nor is any allusion made to it or its ruins by any later his- 
torian, and it is possible that even at that early date the 
city may have been deserted and the people scattered. 

We should have liked very much to remain on the island 
for a week or two, and by excavation in some of the burial 
mounds obtained further information as to the cultural 
status of the inhabitants, and the date at which the island 
was occupied. This, however, was impossible, as time was 
limited, and we were already considerably behindhand in 
our schedule. 

Next day we weighed anchor, and, sailing due north 
from the Boca de Nisucte, arrived opposite the ruins of 
El] Meco in less than an hour. The coastline here is formed 
of the same monotonous, low sandy beach, over grown 
with sour grass, the hinterland covered with scrubby bush, 
interspersed with stretches of swamp. Just before landing 
we observed a small tiger-cat tracking along the sandy 
beach at a great rate, and hurried up our disembarkation in 
the hope of getting a shot at him. By the time we got 
ashore, however, he was out of sight, though we traced 
his tracks for a long distance up the coast very clearly 
defined on the hard sand, and evidently following a small 
deer, or antelope, which had passed that way earlier in the 
day. 

The ruined temple of El] Meco is a really imposing structure, 
and standing back, as it does, only a few hundred yards 
from the shore, forms a landmark visible for many miles at 
sea, as well known as their own faces (better, indeed, for 
not many of them use a looking-glass) to all the fishermen 
along the coast. It is built on a great stone terraced mound 
4oft. high, from the top of which a magnificent view is 
obtained of the island-dotted Caribbean to the east, and 


154 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the flat, swampy /interland to the west. It stands alone, 
a solitary sentinel upon the barren coast, with no subsidiary 
temples, palaces, or market-places near it betokening a 
former town site, yet it is certainly the largest of all the 
east coast temples which we saw throughout our trip, and, 
though small isolated shrines to fishermen’s, hunters’, and 
travellers’ gods are not uncommon, this appears to be the 
only instance of a large Maya temple built away from the 
habitations of men. It was approached by a steep flight 
of stone steps leading up the east side of the terraced mound, 
in front of the base of which was a great pillared colonnade 
and surrounding the whole structure a stone-paved, walled 
courtyard. Now, however, the temple is in ruins, its 
débris covering a great part of the stairway. The pillars 
of the colonnade have fallen, and the courtyard is overgrown 
with dense low bush, not pleasant to traverse, as it is simply 
swarming with snakes, who always seem to prefer the 
neighbourhood of ruins, possibly because the irregular 
surfaces of the large stone heaps facilitate the removal of 
their old skins. One point of considerable interest we 
noticed about this temple, namely, that the original building 
had been comparatively small, consisting of a single long 
chamber, round which at a later date a thick wall had 
been erected on all four sides, in contact—except at the 
back, where a considerable space existed between the two— 
with the outer walls of the older structure. A wide entrance 
was left in front facing the sea, divided into three doorways 
by two large circular stone columns. Thus the original 
temple was made to appear far larger and more imposing 
without in any way adding to its spaciousness or convenience. 
Such a sacrifice of convenience to appearance is, however, 
by no means unknown in architecture outside the Maya 
area. On examining the structure closely, it becomes 
obvious that the stone terraces themselves have had wings 
and extensions added to them from time to time, and the 
probabilities are that the original temple was a structure 
of quite modest proportions, standing possibly on a single 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 155 


stone terrace, and that later, as it became for some unknown 
reason more and more popular, and resorted to as a place 
of pilgrimage from the surrounding towns, it was added 
to till it reached its present imposing size. 

Morley and I slept ashore on the beach in our cots, as 
usual, lulled to sleep by the lapping of the little waves on 
the sand, and the gentle slatting of our mosquito curtains 
in the light sea breeze. We had had an excellent supper, 
washed down with the last of the whisky, and followed by an 
interesting chat on the luck we had had in our trip up to 
the present, with anticipations of even more important 
finds to come. In fact, at peace with all the world, we 
lay smoking cigarettes, and watching the stars through 
our mosquito curtains, commiserating with Held in the 
stuffy, uneasy cabin of the Lilian Y, and looking forward 
to a peaceful sleep. It was not to be, however, as about 
II p.m. a perfect deluge of rain awoke us, and, though we 
jumped out at once and spread the great tarpaulin over 
nets and cots, it was too late, as everything was already 
saturated, and when we got back under the nets we found 
them so weighted down by the heavy tarp. that we were 
enveloped in wet, clammy folds of gauze, with hardly room 
to breathe. Each in turn, and at last both together, 
driven to desperation by the discomfort, jumped out and 
tried to remedy matters, though leaving the warm rugs to 
face the cold, driving rain in wet pyjamas required a con- 
siderable amount of resolution. Nothing, however, could 
be done without stout stakes to support the tarp., and these 
we had not got, so, after a half-hearted effort to hail the 
Lilian Y, which we were sure would prove unavailing, even . 
if anyone on board heard it, we returned to bed, and made 
up our minds to a night of discomfort and semi-suffocation, 
in which we were not disappointed. 


CHAPTER X 


Arrival at Boca Iglesias—Difficulty in Starting Up the Boca—Stuck in 
the Mud—An Old Church—Curious Offerings on the Altar—Reflections 
on the Deserted Church—Probable Date of the Church—Reason for 
Its Isolated Situation—Cape Catoche and the Island of Holbox— 
Arrival at Yalahau—We Sleep on Board—A Former Pirates’ Strong- 
hold—An Old Stone Fort built to Subdue Piracy—Arrival at Cerro 
Cuyo—Difference between the North and East of Yucatan—We reach 
Silan—Set out on a Mule Special for the Interior—A Yucatecan 
Ranch—Difficulty in Hiring a Tramvia—The Town of Silan—lIts 
Resemblance to an Irish Village, in the Suburbs—Gigantic Mound in 
the Town—The Spaniards driven out of Chichen Itza took refuge 
here in 1531—-Ancient Stele from the Mound now set up in the Cabildo 
Wall—Calendar Round Date on the Stele—Stele Built into Church 
Wall—It had contained an Initial Series Date—The Pirate Laffite 
buried at Silan—A Maya Tombstone from the Old Church—Difficulty 
in getting Refreshments—We meet Members of the Municipalidad— 
An Expensive Meal. 

WE made an early start next morning, and, passing Cape 

Catoche—‘ Cabo Catoche Historico,’ as the Spaniards call 

it (to distinguish it from the present cape of that name, 

which is situated on an island a few miles north, and was 
the first point of land ever seen by Europeans on the North 

American Continent)—arrived about 2 p.m. at Boca Iglesias. 

Here a square church tower stands out prominently from 

the surrounding bush, some miles inland, and it was this 

church which we were anxious to visit by way of a shallow 
arm of the sea, which ran almost directly up to it. The 
pilot evidently did not want to set out on the trip that day, 
and began to make excuses—first that we could not cross 
the bar into the lagoon, next that we should not arrive 
before dark, and lastly that the bush we had to traverse 
was alive with ticks and snakes. Finally, after we had 
embarked in the pram, determined to start in spite of all 
opposition, the Evinrude settled the matter by refusing 
156 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 157 


to work, so a postponement till next day became necessary. 
Hardly, however, had we re-embarked on the Lilian Y 
than the engine started off gaily to take the men ashore to 
gather green coco-nuts, of which they drink the milk by 
the gallon, apparently with perfect impunity, though on us 
it had most disastrous effects, comparable only to a stiff 
dose of Epsom salts. 

Next morning we made an early start in the pram, and, 
passing up the narrow Boca (or mouth) against a pretty 
stiff current, found ourselves in a large, shallow, muddy- 
bottomed lagoon, studded with mangrove-covered islands, 
and literally swarming with duck, teal, plover, spur wing, 
spoonbill, and innumerable waders, while the warm, shallow 
waters were full of small sharks or cazones, all attracted 
by the countless myriads of small fry for which the tepid, 
tranquil waters evidently acted as a sort of incubator. 
We had hardly got half a mile along the lagoon when the 
pram stuck firmly in the mud, and could not be moved. 
Morley, Held, and myself, accompanied by George, promptly 
took to a small dorey which we were towing, and left the 
pram to Muddy and Alfredo to get off. George proved a 
noble poler, and for perhaps a quarter of an hour we made 
fine progress, then we also stuck fast on a weed-covered 
mudbank. 

For two weary hours in the broiling sun we kept trying 
passage after passage through the cays and mudbanks, 
but, though we could see the church hardly a mile away, there 
seemed to be no channel leading to it, for every passage 
ended in a cul de sac. Just as we were contemplating 
a return to the Lilian Y we were hailed from the pram with 
the joyful news that they had found the passage, but we 
were separated by over a quarter of a mile of soft, weed- 
grown mud, covered by only a few inches of water, and the 
problem of how to cross this at once presented itself. The 
mud gave no hold for the pole, and it was obvious that only 
by main force (and a good deal of it at that) could the gulf 
be crossed. The crew, resolving itself into a committee of 


158 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the whole crew, elected George (with one dissentient) for 
the job, partly on account of his giant physique, partly 
because even small sharks are reputed to entertain a dis- 
taste to the Ethiop as an article of diet. George answered 
heroically to the call, and went overboard like a shot, to 
disappear at once nearly up to his armpits in the soft 
mud, into which he sank deeper every moment. For- 
tunately he had a hold on the stern of the dorey, and, 
while we steadied her, he was able, by kicking and flounder- 
ing, to bring himself into a more or less horizontal position 
on the mud, where, lying mostly on his tummy, and using 
his gigantic feet, driven by piston-like legs, as a propelling 
force, he managed to shove us over all obstructions along- 
side the pram. It was a great performance, and George’s 
thunderous laugh every time he got a mouthful of mud and 
salt water, and blew it out through that vast ivory-lined 
chasm with a loud “ Hi-yah!’’ was well worth the trip 
in itself. 

Having once struck the channel, we soon arrived at the 
shore of the lagoon nearest the church, where we found 
a stone-paved causeway leading up through the swamp to 
the higher ground upon which it stood. The structure 
itself, built on a slight rising ground, was, like all the old 
Spanish churches in this part of Yucatan, architecturally 
very plain, and singularly lacking in adornment. It was 
shaped like a tau, the head formed by the chancel, the stem 
by the nave. The chancel is 25ft. high, 58ft. long, and 
24ft. 6in. broad. The central part, which contains the 
altar, opens into the nave by a great round arch. On 
either side are square doors opening into rooms now occupied 
by hundreds of bats, which give to the whole place a sour, 
unpleasant odour. The roof is flat and machicolated, 
leading us to suppose that the building served the double 
purpose of church and fort. The nave, 72ft. 8in. long, is 
approached by three entrances, one on the north, one on 
the south, and one on the west side. The walls are oft. 
high, and either the building was never roofed in, or—what 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 159 


is more probable—was roofed with wooden rafters and 
thatch, which have completely disappeared, as no trace 
of a roof is now visible. Immediately behind the altar 
a large hole has been torn in the wall, apparently with the 
object of removing the image of a saint which had been 
fixed there. 

The altar itself, a solid block of masonry, approached by 
two low steps, had upon it a curious collection of objects, 
some of which appeared to have been there for years, while 
others had evidently been placed there quite recently. 
These consisted of several lumps of native incense made of 
the gum of the white acacia, and used by the Maya in their 
religious ceremonies for the last 2,000 years; a number 
of loose “ lucky beans”’ ; a few conch shells ; some flowers 
made from coloured shells; a glass full of lucky beans ; 
a roughly made wooden cross, 2ft. high, draped in ribbons ; 
three crosses—the central one large, the side ones small— 
on a wooden stand; and lastly a tablet, upon which was 
painted a crude picture of the Virgin, pinned to which were 
several gorgeously coloured butterflies. The pilot told us 
that the scattered Indians come for miles round to make 
these offerings, and to perform their novenas at this old 
deserted church. 

It is nearly a hundred years since priests of the Roman 
Catholic Church have gone amongst these Indians, yet the 
faith dies hard, and devotees still exist who endeavour to 
carry out something at least of the outward observances 
of the ritual. We could not help thinking of the few poor 
offerings which some faithful worshipper had left beside 
the mutilated Chacmool statue, and which we had found 
in excavating it. Here was the altar of the god who sup- 
planted the Chacmool, now itself deserted, and honoured 
only by a few tawdry offerings from the descendants of 
those same Indians, whose religion is now a barbarous 
combination of the various creeds held by their ancestors, 
modified by their own ignorance, superstition, and hatred 
of the dominant race. 


160 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


The church is known to the Indians as Xon Hom (pro- 
nounced Shon Hom), but when and by whom it was erected, 
and when and wherefore deserted, no man knows. The 
probabilities were, however, that it was built some time in 
the seventeenth century for the use of a poor Indian 
congregation who lived exclusively in thatched huts, 
which would account for the absence of any trace of ruined 
stone houses in the vicinity. Why the whole of the inhabi- 
tants should have cleared out incontinently, however, is 
one of those insoluble mysteries which confronts one on 
every hand in Yucatan. The isolated situation of the 
settlement, inaccessible by land, and only to be arrived 
at from the sea by the passage of a narrow and tortuous 
passage through the lagoon, was obviously deliberately 
chosen, probably with a view to defence against the 
English and French buccaneers and pirates, who harried 
this coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
The long passage of the lagoon, which would have to be 
made slowly and in boats of light draft, would give the 
inhabitants ample time to make up their minds either to 
flee with their possessions into the impenetrable bush 
of the /interland, or to put up a good fight from the 
fortified roof of their church, whence, without artillery, 
it would have been practically impossible to dislodge 
them. 

We left Boca Iglesia the next day, and, sailing north, 
passed the headland now known as Cape Catoche about 
2 p.m. The cape forms part of a long, narrow, sickle- 
shaped island named Holbox, really a vast sandbank capping 
the north-eastern extremity of the peninsula. From here 
our course, which had hitherto been almost due north, 
changed to west, and about 4.30 we put in at Holbox, the 
principal village of the island—a picturesque little settle- 
ment of about 150 people, all engaged in fishing and turtling, 
who live in bush huts thatched with palm leaf. Even here 
we found a Celador, or Customs official, and a Juez, or 
judge, sent by the Federal Mexican Government, and, of 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 161 


course, a Municipalidad, or Town Council, and an elabor- 
ately laid-out plaza, without both of which the smallest 
village in Yucatan seems unable to exist. 

The people appeared uncommonly happy and contented, 
as they did at all these coast settlements, and they were 
certainly well supplied with corn, vegetables, fowls, eggs, 
and fish, of which we laid in a supply. As at Mujeres, so 
at Holbox, we were told that people rarely died of anything 
but old age, and to pass out under ninety was rather a 
reflection upon the salubrity of the island. 

We anchored that night off Yalahau, on the mainland, 
and all slept on board, as even Morley and I, much as we 
loathed the Lilian Y at anchor as a bedchamber, were 
loth to tackle the mist-enshrouded, swampy shore, with 
mangrove growing to the water’s edge, the rotten piles of 
an ancient wharf sticking up like broken fangs, and the 
song of the mosquito and the bull-frog, with the melancholy 
hooting of an owl, the only sounds to break the silence 
of the fast-falling night. 

Next morning early we boarded the pram to go ashore, 
but could not get within ten yards of the beach owing to a 
bank of sticky mud, over which it required the united 
efforts of George, Muddy, and Hubert finally to shove 
us. 

Yalahau is one of the most melancholy and forsaken- 
looking places it is possible to imagine, as if an aura of the 
crimes which had been committed there formerly hung like 
a pall over the place. It is a waste of mangrove swamp and 
scrubby bush—the home of land crabs and snakes, and the 
haunt of myriads of mosquitoes. A hundred years ago 
it was the last stronghold of the pirates who infested this 
part of the Spanish Main, being excellently well fitted for 
this purpose, for it commanded a clear view of all shipping 
passing between the island of Cuba and the mainland, and, 
being surrounded by many leagues of swampy flats, traversed 
by narrow, tortuous channels through which only boats of 
light draft could pass, permitted the pirates, on the approach 

LL 


162 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


of an enemy vessel too powerful for them to tackle, to retire 
to their stronghold, and from thence, if pursued by boats, 
to scatter through the bush, where it would be impossible 
to hunt them out. These pirates, bloodthirsty and inhuman 
scoundrels as their acts proclaim them to have been, were 
popular enough amongst their neighbours along the coast, 
who enjoyed no inconsiderable share in the flood of gold and 
prosperity following in the wake of their robberies, without 
any of the risk—indeed, at Stephens’ visit to the place, 
seventy-six years ago, several of the old pirates were still 
alive, and regarded by their neighbours as unfortunates 
whose legitimate means of livelihood had been taken from 
them by an over-scrupulous Government. 

We saw the stone fort, with twelve embrasures, which 
was originally built with a view to subduing the pirates, 
but the officers and garrison of which, joining with them, 
rendered them a worse pest than ever. It was constructed 
of square stones taken from an ancient Indian ruin a couple 
of leagues distant. Part of it had been pulled down to 
erect a private residence, but even this latter is now in 
ruins. 

We left Yalahau at 7.40, arriving a couple of hours later 
at Cerro Cuyo, a small town of 250 inhabitants, so called 
because of a large ancient mound or “ cue”’ standing close 
to the waterside, the top of which has now been truncated 
to accommodate a small lighthouse. The town is situated 
on the narrow sandbank which runs parallel with the whole 
north coast of Yucatan, from which it is separated by a 
long, narrow, shallow lagoon, known as the “ Rio Lagarto,” 
or “ Alligator River,’ though it does not appear to harbour 
many alligators, and is certainly not a river, being in the 
dry season a swamp which may be crossed in many places 
on foot, and, in the wet season a shallow lagoon closely 
packed with mangrove cays. | 

We noticed a great difference between Cerro Cuyo and the 
settlements which we had hitherto visited. In the former 
every man was his own master, doing a little fishing, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 163 


turtling, hunting, or agriculture, as the spirit moved him, 
but for the most part taking things easy with a cigarette, 
a hammock, and—when times were good—a pint of rum. 

In Cerro Cuyo, however, small though it is, a new air 
of briskness and movement was noticeable ; bales of hene- 
quen fibre and cedar logs were being taken out from the 
hinterland on light railroads, which ran for many miles 
back to the south and west, and nearly all the inhabitants 
were employees of the “ Compania Commercial de Fincas 
Rusticas,” or Commercial Company of Rural Estates, 
which had large sugar, rum, and henequen estates in the 
interior, took out woods and gums, and manufactured salt 
on a large scale along the Rio Lagarto. It was, in fact, the 
first town of the “ New Yucatan,” the busy, stirring, get- 
rich-quick, northern part of the peninsula, as different from 
the medizval east, which has changed little since the 
conquest, as the city of New York from a New England 
village. 

At midnight we arrived at the port of Silan, anchoring 
till the Celandor boarded us at six next morning. This is a 
clean little town of 350 inhabitants, with the usual vast 
plaza, one side of which is occupied by a church, now— 
like nearly all churches throughout Yucatan—either closed 
or employed for secular purposes. It is the port of the 
town of Silan, three leagues in the interior, with which it is 
connected by a Decauville light railroad, having covered-in 
passenger coaches and a small gasolene engine. 

The principal export of the place is henequen, or sisal fibre, 
used by the International Harvester Company for binding 
sheaves of corn, and without which it would be impossible 
to harvest the vast American corn crop. Trainloads of 
great shining oblong yellow bales of this kept coming out 
on the little flat cars, while we looked on, for shipment to 
Progreso in shallow draft bungays, from whence they 
would be transhipped to the waiting steamers. Early as 
we were, the only passenger train of the day had already 
gone, drawn by the only available engine ; we were therefore 


164 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


compelled to hire a “ special,’ consisting of a mule-drawn 
flat car, which could only take us about two-thirds of our 
journey, to a farm where we were told we would have to 
hire another mule special, as our own animal was urgently 
needed at the terminus for shunting purposes. 

We arrived safely at the farm—a huge adobe structure, 
thatched with palm leaf, and surrounded by an immense 
corral, in the centre of which stood the usual windmill and 
water trough, ubiquitous throughout Yucatan, where 
practically all the water is pumped up from deep wells and 
cenotes. The place was really more a cattle ranch than a 
farm, and in the corral were a few depressed-looking bony 
steers and horses, while through the great plain outside, 
covered with short grass burnt to the colour of hay, and 
plentifully interspersed with patches of wiry bush, many 
more half-starved animals wandered disconsolately about 
in search of something to eat. 

The farmer’s wife would at first on no account hire a 
tramvia and mule to four suspicious-looking strangers, 
and it required fully half an hour of Morley’s persuasive 
eloquence, with a deposit in gold, to persuade her that we 
were not such desperadoes as we looked, and might safely 
be entrusted with a mule and tramvia, difficult objects in 
any case to make away with. 

We arrived about mid-day at a level crossing, which we 
found was the junction for Silan, and, tying the mule up, 
and leaving the car on a siding, had to trudge over nearly 
two miles of shadeless limestone road, under the scorching 
midday sun, before reaching the suburbs of the town. 
These were for all the world like the suburbs of a large 
village in the west of Ireland—mud-built, small-windowed, 
earth-floored, thatched cottages, whitewashed outside, 
with yards surrounded by crazy low walls, built of stones 
placed on top of each other anyhow, and ready to fall if a 
cat jumped over them, ducks, pigs, and goats wandering in 
and out of the living-rooms at will, while the sole sanitary 
arrangement consisted of a kitchen midden within convenient 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 165 


distance of the window, from which most of the refuse was 
thrown out. 

From the suburbs we suddenly debouched into an im- 
mense plaza, with the cabildo, or municipal buildings, on 
one side, and opposite this the fine old church, now closed. 
Just beyond the churchyard wall is one of the most gigantic 
mounds in all Yucatan ; it is 50ft. high by 4ooft. long, and 
is closely connected with another of almost equal size. 
All the stone to build the church, the municipal buildings, 
and most of the stone houses and walls in the town has been 
taken out ot this vast mound without apparently reducing 
its size very materially. Stephens, who visited the place in 
1841, was told by the then curé that he could remember 
the time when there stood on one side of the mounds great 
terraced buildings and pillared porticos, which had since 
fallen down, and we know that Silan was at the time of the 
conquest an important city of the Maya, for it was here in 
I531I A.D. that Montejo’s Spaniards retired after they had 
been driven out of Chichen Itza, and, disgusted with the 
hard life, the lack of gold, and the incessant fighting, deter- 
mined to leave Yucatan for good. They were well received 
by the young cacique, Anamix Chel, Lord of the Cheles, 
and entertained by him very hospitably for several months, 
during which their wounds healed, and they completely 
recovered from the effects of their terrible experiences at 
Chichen Itza. 

After this, accounts of the further progress of the Spaniards 
differ somewhat. Herrera says that, accompanied by some 
of the Silan nobles, they marched across to Campeche by 
land, whereas Cogolludo, following other contemporary 
writers, thinks they marched over the route by which we 
had just arrived to the port of Silan, and from there took 
ship for Campeche. This latter is far the more probable, 
as a march through a long stretch of country densely popu- 
lated by hostile Indians, all of them hating the Spaniards, 
and many of them at war with the Cheles themselves, 
seems practically impossible. 


166 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Both mounds had evidently formed gigantic substruc- 
tures for the support of great ranges of stone buildings, as 
is indicated by the presence of stone-faced subterranean 
chambers and arches, which are brought to light even now 
when excavations are being made for fresh stone, and into 
one of which (a good-sized arched room, recently discovered) 
we descended. 

The fact that these great palaces and temples, actually 
in use about the middle of the sixteenth century, had 
practically disappeared, leaving only mounds of ruins, a 
century and a half later, a most unusual occurrence with 
Maya buildings, many of which are but little altered after 
I,000 years, can only be explained on the hypothesis that 
they had been removed piecemeal, the fine squared stones 
of the temples and palaces themselves first, for the construc- 
tion of the church, public buildings, houses, and walls of 
the modern town. We were shown a large flat slab of 
stone, which some years previously had been removed 
from the mound. It was now plastered into the back wall 
of the cabildo, and exhibited in fairly high relief the legs, 
with anklets and sandals, of a human figure somewhat larger 
than life, standing upon a row of five glyphs, which rested 
in turn upon the heads and shoulders of two smaller figures 
of slaves, bent nearly double under the burden, and wearing 
over their foreheads long, dependent feather ornaments. 

Of the glyphs, reading from left to right, the first is 7 
Muluc (the bar for 5 is very plain, but the two ovals 
separated by a longer oval, standing for 2, have not come 
out well in the photograph). The one next this is clearly 2 
Kayab, the date recorded being 7 Muluc, the third day of 
the month Kayab, but this is a calendar round date only, 
and recurs every 18,980 days, or approximately 52 years, 
and, as no period ending is given which would fix the date 
more accurately, it is practically useless to us, and is, in 
fact, equivalent to fixing a date in the Christian era as 
occurring on a certain oth July in the 18th year of an 
unknown century; thus, 9.7.18. To contemporaneous 


"NVLVOOA ‘VCIMNAW AO TXID VZILSAW 


“GVAVIVdIOINAW VI Ad 
VSVO NI MON GNNOW WOU ATALS NAMOUT “NVTIS 








IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 167 


people the century was easily supplied, just as to the Maya 
who wrote this 2 Muluc 7 Kayab the cycle did not need to 
be expressed, but to archeologists finding it a few centuries 
later it is the most essential part of the whole inscription. 

The individual who fixed this stone in the wall of the 
cabildo must have been something of a humorist in his way, 
as he has executed in plaster, standing on the legs of the 
ancient Maya chief or king, the very crude figure of a Spanish 
soldier, with musket, fixed bayonet, belt, and shoulder strap. 

On visiting the church we were greatly excited at finding, 
built into the wall which surrounds it, a small stele, having 
sculptured upon its exposed side the figure of a warrior in 
low relief, surrounded by rows of glyphs. The top glyph in 
the left-hand corner was obviously the introducing glyph 
to an Initial Series, and the other glyphs in the column had 
evidently had numerical coefficients in front of them, which 
left no doubt in our minds that this had originally contained 
an Initial Series date, from which we could have worked 
out the exact date of the inscription in Christian chronology. 
Unfortunately the stone, which was a not very tough 
limestone, was so worn that it was not possible to decipher 
either numbers or glyphs. We all tried it in every light 
and from every position. We wet it, and then we scrubbed 
it, we sat round it for hours like vultures round a dying 
mule, and at length even photographed it, but all to no 
purpose ; it completely eluded us. 

The pirate Laffite, probably one of the most famous 
(or rather infamous) buccaneers of the latter part of the 
eighteenth century, had at one time pursued his calling along 
this part of the coast of Yucatan, and been buried in the 
church at Silan, and we were anxious to see his grave, but 
not only was this not known, but his very name had been 
forgotten. Such is fame! 

The church had apparently been built upon the foundation 
of a much more ancient structure, part of which, in the 
form of arches and low walls, was still standing. 

Built into the wall of the present church we found a 


Neb te 


168 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


tablet which had evidently been removed from the older 
building, and of which we could make nothing. On taking 
a photograph we found that it had been plastered in upside 
down, but even right side up it is nearly as incomprehensible. 
The only easily distinguishable part of the inscription is the 
date, 1739, with which the second line commences. It is 
probably the gravestone of a Maya Indian who died and 
was buried in the church in the year 1739, the curious 
lettering consisting partly of those weird symbols used by 
the Spaniards to express Maya letters and syllables not 
capable of being written in Castillian, and partly of abbre- 
viations. Like the calendar round date in the cabildo, 
the inscription, though no doubt perfectly plain to a con- 
temporary padre with a knowledge of Maya, is a sealed 
book to the modern. 

It was curious that of the three date inscriptions which 
we found at Silan, the Initial Series probably going back to 
about the seventh century of our era, the calendar round 
date to the fifteenth or sixteenth, and the Christian to the 
early eighteenth, only the last, which from an archeological 
point of view is by far the least important, should be 
decipherable. 

After our labours in the church were finished we found 
ourselves exceedingly hungry and thirsty, and promptly 
went forth in search of something to eat. At the cabildo 
we were given plenty of beautifully cool, clear, well water, 
but discovered that, this being a purely Indian village, 
nothing in the way of a restaurant existed, the only articles 
of food obtainable being fowls, pork, tortillas, and beans, 
and as everyone produced their own supply of these, it 
would have been superfluous to offer them for sale cooked. 
We sent Muddy out to forage, and he returned in about 
half an hour with an ancient and very small Indian, who had 
recently lost his wife, and, actuated presumably by the 
same beneficent instinct which moves a dog to adopt a 
family of orphan puppies, agreed to supply us—for a con- 
sideration—with lunch, which would be ready in about 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 169 


an hour. We passed the time sitting in the cool of the 
cabildo veranda chatting to the Mayor and serveral mem- 
bers of the Municipal Council, who strolled up one by one, 
hearing that strangers had visited the town. These men 
were undoubtedly descendants of those Indians who had 
erected the mounds, sculptured the inscriptions, and later 
assisted the Spaniards of Montejo in their dire necessity, 
yet they took not the slightest interest in the history or 
traditions of their great ancestors, who enjoyed a high 
degree of civilisation at a period when our own forebears 
were scratching impressionist sketches on a soup bone 
chastely clad in a coat of blue paint. Their chief plaint 
was against the Federal Government, and, indeed, Yucatan is 
in this, as in many other ways, extremely like the Emerald 
Isle, in that everyone is “‘ agin the Government.”’ It was 
useless to point out to them that the peons had recently 
been liberated from what was practically a state of slavery 
by the Carranza Government, that wages were never so 
high, and prosperity never so universal throughout Yucatan, 
as at present; they contended that though the poor peon 
might, and in fact did, now get up to five dollars gold per 
day as a free labourer, yet was this more than counter- 
balanced by the increase in price of necessities, forgetting 
that where in former years the Indian was satisfied with 
enough tortillas, frijoles, and chili for himself and family, 
with an occasional egg or a piece of meat as a treat, and 
sufficient brown cotton to make clothes, for himself, wife, 
and children, he now wanted European clothes, canned 
goods, and condensed milk—and, what is more, he gets 
them, yet is apparently far less contented with his lot than 
in the old days of peonage. 

The discussion was hardly begun when Muddy announced 
the joyful news that lunch was ready, and we retired to our 
host’s little round hut, away off in the suburbs, to partake 
of it. An ancient rooster, sacrificed for the occasion, 
formed the piéce de résistance, helped out by corn cakes, 
beans, and sauce of chili pepper and raw onions chopped 


170 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


together, the whole washed down by coffee made of ground 
parched maize. We were too hungry to be critical, and 
were really thankful to our host, who was apparently the 
only person in the town willing to feed us at any price, 
though his charge of ten silver dollars (just over five 
dollars gold) seemed rather steep. We admired our table- 
cloth and serviettes immensely. Though made of coarse 
cotton, they were beautifully worked with figures of quaint 
mythological monsters and cubist figures of birds and 
animals done in bright-coloured thread, evidently relics 
of the old gentleman’s deceased wife. 

Immediately after lunch we set out on the return journey, 
and when just at the confines of the town heard singing 
in a house, where we were told that a santo, who had been 
discovered a short time ago in the bush, was receiving a 
novena. ‘Thinking that this santo might be one of the large 
stucco temple figures of the Ancients, we quietly entered 
the house, where we found a few of the devout seated on 
forms in front of a very ordinary wooden figure of a Christian 
saint, evidently taken from an old Spanish church, which, 
like so many similar buildings put up after the conquest, 
when labour was cheap and the population large, was soon 
deserted and buried in the all-embracing bush, as the 
Indian population became rapidly exterminated under the 
exactions of their Spanish masters. 

We found our mule and tramvia undisturbed, and 
arrived without incident in the port at nightfall, boarded 
the Lilian Y, weighed anchor, and, after a successful 
night’s run, arrived soon after midnight in the port of 
Progreso on the 6th February. 


CHAPTER XI 


Arrival at Progreso—English and Americans popular in Yucatan—We 
are Relieved of our Arms—High Cost of Living and Service—Inflated 
Wages—Resemblance of Merida to Monte Carlo—Mass-no Longer 
Celebrated in the Churches—Palace of Francisco Montejo—Sculptured 
Facade all the Work of Native Artists—Damage Done in Cathedral 
by Mexican Federal Troops—Flower Decorated Plaza Chief 
Rendezvous—Boot Cleaning—Reason for Few Entertainments being 
Given by Meridanos to Foreigners—Caste Barriers being Broken 
Down—Mestizas Formerly Compelled to Wear Special Dress—Native 
Dress of Men and Women—High Prices—No Alcohol on Sale—An 
Unfortunate Incident—Meridanos All Speak Maya, and many English 
—The Governor of Yucatan—A Successful Administration—Sefior 
Don Juan Martinez, an Accomplished Maya Scholar—Guardians of 
the Ruins—Land Barons of Yucatan, their Recent Rapid Enrichment 
—Molina Solis, the Historian—Early Start of Trains from Merida— 
Arrival in Dzibalché—Hiring a Fotingo—Ranch of San Luis—Decline 
of Cattle Ranches in Yucatan—A Bad Road for Motoring—Arrival 
at the Ruins of Dzibalché—Descriptions of the Temples—Unde- 
cipherable Inscriptions—The Initial Series Inscription—The Date 
Recorded by it is the Latest of all Long Count Inscriptions— 
Historically not Improbable. 


WE were boarded by the Customs and Health Authorities 
at 8.30 next morning, and on learning that the party con- 
sisted of two American citizens and a British subject the 
progress of our baggage through the usual Customs for- 
malities was greatly expedited, for the Yucatecans, unlike 
most Mexicans, are extremely friendly both to Great 
Britain and the U.S.A., one reason being that most of their 
imports are derived from the latter country, while henequen 
—practically their only export—finds a ready market 
there. There is no harbour at Progreso, consequently 
ships are compelled to anchor out in the open roadstead to 
gigantic sunken chains provided by the Government for 
that purpose, for which privilege they pay five dollars 
gold daily. 

At the Custom House we were relieved of the arsenal 

171 


172 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


of automatics, revolvers, and belts and bandoliers of 
cartridges carried by Morley and Held, as no one is permitted 
to carry firearms in the State of Yucatan—a most excellent 
and thoroughly sensible regulation, showing a compre- 
hensive knowledge on the part of the authorities of the 
psychology of their countrymen. If such a law were only 
enforced throughout Latin America it would do more to 
civilise the country and abolish the perennial revolutions 
than all the talk of all the “ patriots.” 

We had heard a good deal about the high wages and high 
cost of living in Yucatan, but our first personal experience of 
it consisted in having to pay ten dollars gold for a cart to 
transfer our baggage from the Custom House to the railway- 
station, a distance of about a quarter of a mile. We 
simply reviled the cartman at first when he made this 
apparently extortionate demand, but soon discovered to our 
sorrow that the transfer of baggage is a sort of monopoly, 
for which the fortunate monopolists charge practically 
“all the traffic will bear ’’—in other words as much as they 
think the victim’s pocket will stand. Fortunately for us, 
our own appearance and that of our baggage, after a month 
of the Lilian Y, were equally disreputable, so we. got off 
comparatively lightly. 

The pier master—well known to me, as he had formerly 
been a clerk in the British Honduras Government Service— 
told us that on the piers and wharves unskilled labourers 
were being paid five dollars gold daily, while skilled steve- 
dores, with overtime, sometimes made as much as twenty- 
five dollars in twenty-four hours. I wonder what proportion 
of professional men—lawyers, parsons, doctors—either in 
England or the United States make such incomes as these ? 

We caught the 10.30 train for Merida, arriving in little 
over an hour, after an extremely unpleasant journey in a 
crowded carriage—hot as an oven, and permeated by the 
fine limestone dust of the peninsula, which induces in 
new-comers, till they get used to it, an unpleasant state of 
suffocation. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 173 


Merida is one of the prettiest, cleanest, gayest little 
capitals it has been my good fortune to visit. In many 
ways it reminds one of Monte Carlo in the season. The 
warm climate, the scrupulous cleanliness of the streets and 
plazas, the flowers, music, and sunshine, the crowds of 
pretty, well-dressed girls, the numbers of prosperous- 
appearing idlers, the absence of poverty, squalor, and 
ugliness, and the perpetual air of festa, are all common to 
both. 

The Plaza de Independencia is the main plaza or square, 
and the chief place of rendezvous of the town. Its north 
side is occupied by the State Executive Palace, its south 
by the Montejo Palace, its west by the Municipal Palace, 
while on its east side stands the fine old sixteenth century 
cathedral, where, though the devout are allowed to enter 
and pray in front of the altar, Mass is no longer celebrated, 
as all the padres, with the exception of one or two in Merida 
and Campeche (who, however, do not celebrate the Mass, 
but confine themselves to the performance of baptisms and 
weddings) have been expelled from Yucatan, amongst them 
the Archbishop, who is at present in exile in Cuba, and 
whose fine old palace adjoining the cathedral has now been 
converted into Government offices. 

Carrancista soldiers, under General Alvarado, did a great 
deal of damage in the cathedral when they entered Merida, 
burning the magnificent, priceless old seventeenth century 
reredos and gilded carving of the altar, and practically 
destroying the ecclesiastical library, which contained four 
copies of the first edition of Cogolludo’s Historia de Yucathan, 
a work indispensable to the student of Maya archeology. 
In the somewhat remote hope that these might have been 
preserved by some marauding soldier, we inserted an 
advertisement several times in the Voz de la Revolucion, 
the principal paper and official organ of the Government in 
Yucatan, offering to purchase copies of Cogulludo, without 
result, however; and, indeed, no Mexican soldier would 
have looked upon four ancient volumes as worthy loot, and, 


174 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


like Bishop Landa, when dealing with MSS. of the aborigines 
three centuries previously, would probably have cast them 
into the fire, as in his opinion likely to perpetuate a pernicious 
and worn-out religious system. 

The facade of the Montejo Palace is a very fine one, 
decorated with many statues of Spanish ladies in the dress 
of the period, knights in armour, and scantily-clothed 
Indians. All the carving is said to have been done by native 
Indian sculptors, and this is probably the case, as we realise 
from the remains they have left behind their remarkable 
cleverness in stone work of all kinds. The decoration of the 
hated conqueror’s palace with statues of the haughty 
Spaniard in full armour triumphing over their own half- 
clad chiefs, exhibited, moreover, on the facade of the 
principal house in the principal square, for all who passed 
to see, must have been a bitterly hateful task to the Indian 
artists, whose pride of birth and the length and purity of 
whose descent equalled the proudest Castillian of them 
all. 

The plaza is slightly raised and asphalted ; like the streets, 
it is kept scrupulously clean, and is covered with beds of 
beautiful sweet-smelling flowering shrubs and trees, amidst 
which are walks supplied with free seats, while at night, 
from eight to ten, the whole place is brilliantly illuminated. 
An excellent band plays, and it is then that all Merida comes 
forth to enjoy itself. Some ride slowly round and round the 
outer zone in automobiles, looking at the crowd, listening to 
the band, and exchanging smiles, nods, bows, and finger 
twiddlings with their friends passing on foot, or in other 
autos. Others promenade round the inner zone, or sit on 
the seats, to see and be seen, while neat, polite little boys 
flit silently amongst the crowd, selling dulce and cigarettes, 
or carrying tiny boot-cleaning outfits ready to give one’s 
shoes a shine for the modest sum of 50 cents, for no Meridano 
seems to get his boots cleaned in the morning, or at his own 
house, but waits till he goes abroad and engages a bootblack, 
of whom there are swarms throughout the city. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 178 


It is a curious fact that amongst a people so fond of inno- 
cent pleasure private entertainments are conspicuous by 
their absence. Dinners at their own houses are rare, and 
dances of still less frequent occurrence. Even foreigners 
bringing letters of introduction to native families are 
rarely entertained at their private houses, but feasted—on 
an elaborate scale, it is true—at clubs, hotels, or restaurants. 
One reason for this, I believe, is that on more than one 
occasion foreign travellers who have been entertained at the 
private residences of the native aristocracy have, on writing 
their experiences later, given most unflattering—and, it 
must be admitted, unfair—descriptions of the home life 
and morals of the Meridanos. 

Everywhere the country is in a transitional state. The 
old order is giving place to the new, and the Mestizo and 
peon (the latter, till freed by Alvarado, a virtual slave) 
are breaking down the barriers of caste which separated 
them from the Spanish Yucatecan, and gradually becoming 
free citizens of a free Republic. At one time the Indians 
and Mestizas, or women of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, 
were compelled to wear a distinguishing costume consisting 
of the huipil (a long, loose, sleeveless cotton garment cut 
square and rather low at the neck), anda #7k, or cotton petti- 
coat reaching to the ankles. These huzfils were always 
kept scrupulously clean, and often exquisitely embroidered 
by the owners at the neck, armholes, and bottom of the 
skirt with gaily coloured cotton in all sorts of fantastic 
devices. Their magnificent black hair, ribbon adorned, 
was worn braided, hanging down the back, sometimes 
covered with a shawl, while the richer ones were often 
loaded with jewellery—chains, rosaries, earrings, rings, and 
brooches. This undemocratic regulation has now been 
abolished, and Indians and Mestizas dress as they like. The 
garments of their ancestors are, however, hard to cast off, 
and many of the elder women, even in Merida, still cling to 
them, with the result that one not infrequently sees an 
old mother promenading about the plaza in bare head, 


176 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


moccasined feet, and loose huipil and pik, arm in arm with 
her daughter in high-heeled shoes, elaborate coiffure, 
surmounted by a still more elaborate hat, and clothed 
in the latest importation in the way of gowns from 
the U.S.A. It must, however, be admitted that the mother’s 
costume is by far the more becoming, as well as comfortable, 
for the female Yucatecan of all classes almost invariably 
possesses a figure short and somewhat broad, with practically 
no waistline marked by nature, eminently unfitted for 
the clothes of modern civilisation. 

Many Indian workmen may still be seen wearing a short 
striped apron, the distinguishing badge of their class, 
which formerly they were compelled to wear, and now 
continue, apparently from sheer inability to break a centuries- 
long custom, though the compulsion no longer exists. 

At the best hotels, if one asks for the excellent corn cake 
of the country he is regarded with mild contempt as an 
unprogressive countryman, and, indeed, the toothsome 
tortilla has in the city been largely superseded by atrocious 
white bread. Even fosole, the native drink made from 
ground corn and drunk all over the Maya area for the last 
2,000 years, is now offered for sale at the little kiosks and 
stalls round the plaza in the form of posole helada, or iced 
posole } 

The whole country was practically bone dry, no alcohol 
except beer and light wine being on sale. The former is 
so very mild that it would be impossible to drink sufficient 
of it to induce intoxication, while the price of the latter is 
so prohibitive that no one but a millionaire could afford 
to buy sufficient of it to produce the same result. In 
consequence of this strict prohibition an unfortunate contre- 
temps occurred to us. Morley had six bottles of claret on 
board the Lilian Y, which he insisted upon landing, and 
which we brought safely through the Customs, quite ignorant 
that any duty had to be paid on them. These wretched 
bottles of claret proved a white elephant to us, as we lugged 
them about all over the country, though no one thought of 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 177 


drinking any. On returning from Chichen to Merida, 
however, they were, as usual, bestowed in our grub box, 
which an over-zealous Customs official, who had had some 
misunderstanding with Muddy, insisted on _ searching. 
He said nothing at the time, but telegraphed the authorities 
in Merida, who arrested the unfortunate Muddy, who was in 
charge of the luggage, on his arrival, and hauled him off to 
the police station. Wemeanwhile had taken an auto for the 
hotel, as Muddy had always proved himself capable of 
clearing the baggage. 

The next we heard of the matter was the arrival of a 
small policeman an hour or so later to tell us of Muddy’s 
plight, and the retention of most of our luggage in the 
police station, whither we hurried at once. We found 
Muddy sitting peacefully on a bench in the office, quite 
undisturbed. Nothing, however, would induce the sergeant 
to let him depart till the arrival of the Chief of Police, who, 
we were told, was closeted in his office, and would appear 
before long. We sent out for some food for Muddy, and, 
not liking to desert him, Morley and I took it in turns to 
sit up with him till about 2 a.m., when, as it became obvious 
the chief was not on the premises at all, we retired to the 
hotel to bed, which was just as well, for he did not arrive 
till Ir a.m. next morning, when he very politely expressed 
his sorrow for the inconvenience we had been put to, 
and dismissed Muddy in triumphant possession of the 
claret. 

One is loth, however, to criticise the Yucatecans, for 
their kindliness, cleanliness, hospitality, and cheerful 
optimism far outweigh their minor faults ; and whereas the 
latter are ephemeral, and rather the result of a rapidly 
developing civilisation than temperamental, the latter are 
permanent, and ingrained in the Yucatecan character. 
Nearly everyone in Merida can speak Maya in addition to 
Spanish, and an astonishingly large proportion of the 
people have at least a working knowledge of English; so 
much so that it behoves one to be remarkably careful not 

Mi 


178 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


to make adverse criticisms aloud in that language of the 
native manners and customs. Morley overheard an Indian 
urchin shouting to one of his companions: “ Conex, conex, 
jugar baseball, ten catcher, tech pitcher ’”—‘‘ Come along, 
come along to play baseball, I catcher, you pitcher’’—Maya, 
Spanish, and good Americanese, all mixed in one sentence. 
On the 27th we were received in the State Executive 
Palace by His Excellency Carlos Castro Morales, Governor 
of Yucatan. What struck us most forcibly at first sight of 
him was his immense and colossal size, for, though not very 
tall, he was tremendously broad and thick, yet extra- 
ordinarily active for a man of such vast bulk. He smoked 
brown orozus—Mexican cigarettes—from morning to night, 
the stub of one serving as a light for its successor. These 
were covered with paper impregnated with liquorice, and 
the tobacco they contained was so saturated in saltpetre that 
it burnt like a time-fuse, which it strongly resembled in 
flavour and smell. The Governor was at one time an 
operative on the Yucatecan railroad, and, being a man of 
considerable ability, was put in by the Socialists, as 
Governor. He proved a success from the first, and never 
has the country enjoyed such prosperity, and never were the 
labouring classes so free, and never have they received such 
wages as during his régime. He was very pleasant and 
agreeable to us, asking many questions as to the object of 
our visit, and showing no mean knowledge of the archeology 
and former history of the country. Indeed, he put me right 
in the spelling of the Maya word “ Chachac”’ in the title 
of a little pamphlet of mine he had read, and which should 
have been written “‘ Chachac,”’ to denote the Maya explosive 
“Ch.”” We found that he spoke with equal facility Spanish 
and Maya. On my expressing regret at seeing all the 
churches closed and padres banished, and asking if he were a 
Catholic, he struck his great chest with his fist, like a drum, 
and shouted: “ No, Sevor, yo no estoy Catolico, yo no estoy 
Protestante, ‘yo soy Pensador libre’’—‘‘ No, sir, I am not a 
Catholic, I am not a Protestant, I am a Free Thinker ’’— 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 179 


and as this matter of religion bid fair to lead to friction, 
we quickly changed the subject. He gave us each an open 
letter addressed to all Government officials and others 
throughout Yucatan, advising them to give us every aid 
and assistance in their power in the prosecution of our 
archeological work, and, furthermore, put the railroad 
automobiles at our disposal, to convey us to any ruins or 
places of interest which we might wish to visit ; and so with 
mutual expressions of goodwill we took leave of the most 
genial, human, and successful Socialist it has ever been my 
good fortune to meet. On numerous occasions we met 
Sehor Don Juan Martinez, recently representative in the 
U.S.A. of the ‘‘ Commission Reguladora de Henequen ”’ of 
Yucatan, which practically controls the entire trade of the 
State. He had previously been Government Inspector 
of Ruins, and introduced us to his son who now occupied 
that office. Mr. Juan Martinez is an extremely intelligent 
man, with a thorough knowledge of English, very strong 
American sympathies, and an acquaintance with the ancient 
written Maya language probably unsurpassed in the 
Peninsula. He has translated MS. records in old Maya 
dating from just after the conquest, as well as portions of 
the books of Chilam Balaam, the ancient Indian historical 
records kept by each town at first in the glyphic system 
employed by the Mayas before the conquest, but later 
translated into Spanish by some educated Indian very soon 
after the conquest. It is greatly to be hoped that, having 
at least temporarily abandoned his labours as an ambassador 
of commerce, Mr. Martinez may be willing to turn his 
unique knowledge of ancient Maya to account, and publish 
some of the MSS., translations which he has made, of old 
Indian records and documents, which may otherwise be 
lost to the student of Maya archeology for ever. Mr. 
Martinez, junior, the present Government Inspector of 
Ruins, was extremely kind to us ; giving us letters of intro- 
duction to the local Guardianes of the ruins, who are 
all under his supervision : for the Government realising at 


180 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


length the immense value and interest of these wonderful 
memorials of the past, has placed one or more guardians or 
caretakers in each of the principal ruins, who are paid by the 
state, and whose business it is to keep the buildings clean 
and free from bush, and to see that none of the statues, 
inscriptions, stucco paintings, etc., are removed by visitors, 
as they have been practically indiscriminately in the 
past. It may be also that the Government were not 
unwilling to demonstrate to outsiders that a Socialist 
Administration can not only lead the State to a material 
prosperity hitherto unknown, but alone of all the Govern- 
ments which have ruled Yucatan since the time of the 
conquest, is sufficiently enlightened to actually spend a 
considerable amount of money in the preservation of her 
artistic and archeological memorials. He also took us 
round to the owners of ranches on which the ruins were 
situated, or to their representatives in Merida, and from 
them we obtained letters to their major-domos instructing 
them to provide us with food, lodging, transport, or in fact 
anything within their power which we might require. 
Probably in no country in the world would hospitality have 
been carried so far as the provision of free bed and board 
for an indefinite period, for a number of practically unknown 
strangers. But the land barons of Yucatan occupy in 
many ways a unique position. Their vast estates, often 
grants from the Spanish crown, dating back to the days of 
the conquest, run to hundreds of thousands of acres, their 
Indian and Mestizo peons are numbered by hundreds, 
sometimes even by the thousand, while the country houses 
where they spend the hot season are often so vast as to 
resemble rather royal palaces than private dwellings. Their 
revenues, which in former days were indeed meagre, being 
derived from the few head of stock carried by their vast 
stretches of stony arid land, have, since the introduction of 
henequen, for the cultivation of which this land is peculiarly 
well adapted, swollen in the most Aladdin-like manner, till 
Merida is reported to contain more millionaires in proportion 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 181 


to its population than any city in the world—not excluding 
Pittsburg. 

We had several very interesting interviews with Don 
Francisco Juan Molina Solis, the historian of Yucatan, 
whose works, the Historia de la Conquista de Yucatan 
and Yucatan durante la dominacion Espatola, have a 
wide circulation amongst archeologists outside the Penin- 
sula. Notwithstanding his great age he is now engaged in 
writing a history of Yucatan from the end of the Spanish 
rule to the present day. His knowledge of the conquest of 
the various tribes of Maya with whom the Spaniards came 
in contact, the cities and territories occupied by them, and 
of the early ecclesiastical history of Yucatan, is absolutely 
unsurpassed and unique. Indeed, he and Don Juan 
Martinez are almost the only survivals of a generation who 
regarded a knowledge of the wonderful history and literature 
of their own country as more important than a foremost 
place in the mad rush for wealth, which now alone seems to 
occupy the people of Yucatan. 

At 6 a.m. on the morning of March 1st we left Merida 
by the Campeche railroad, with the object of visiting the 
ruins of Holactun, situated at a distance of about I00 
kilometres from the capital, where we hoped to find, and 
possibly decipher, one of the three Initial Series dates known 
to exist in Yucatan ; after which we intended to go on to 
Campeche by rail, and there meet Held, who had already 
left by the Lilian Y from Progreso, with a view to calling 
in at, and examining, the coast towns between the two 
places. The trains from Merida to points throughout the 
peninsula all seem to start in the very early hours of the 
morning, an extremely awkward arrangement for travellers, 
as life at the hotels does not commence till between 7 and 
8 a.m. with the service of tea, coffee, chocolate, and pan 
dulce, and to ask for anything of the sort before 6 a.m. would 
be looked upon by the extremely independent servants of 
the Socialist régime as nothing short of a British outrage. 
As we expected to be away for several days we had to take 


182 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


cots, blankets, a change of clothes, and photographic and 
drawing outfits, and by the aid of two of the clean, fast 
little public automobiles, the most efficient and the only 
really reasonably cheap service in Yucatan, just succeeded 
in getting our luggage registered (a Herculean task in itself) 
and catching the train. We managed to seize half a dozen 
good-sized cakes of pan dulce, which resembled very stodgy 
sponge cakes, at the station, upon which, without the aid 
of any liquid to wash it down, we made shift for breakfast ; 
but long, long before the train covered the 100 kilometres 
between Merida and Dzibalché, the nearest station to the 
ruins, we were consumed by an overwhelming thirst, in no 
wise relieved by the heat and clouds of limestone dust in 
the carriage. On arriving at Dzibalché, a parched-looking 
Indian town of possibly 4,000 inhabitants, with most of the 
adobe walled, leaf-thatched houses standing in large, dirty, 
untidy bush-grown lots, surrounded by unmortared stone 
walls, we hired the only cart at the station to take our 
baggage to the plaza, as being the most likely place in the 
town to hire horses, and trudged behind it ourselves in the 
blistering heat of the sun’s rays reflected from the glaring 
white limestone soil. 

On arriving at the plaza, what was our delight to find a 
little ‘‘ Ford,” known all over Yucatan as “ Fotingos,”’ 
the Aztec diminutive ‘‘ 7mgo’’ having been first affixed to 
the “ Ford ”’ in affectionate appreciation of the wonders the 
little cars can do in this roadless land, and the resulting 
combination being later rendered “ Fotingo’”’ by the 
Indians. The owner, Sefior Candelario, agreed to take us 
that day to the Rancho of San Luis, and from thence, if 
car made by mortal hands could accomplish it, on to 
Holactun, which had never been visited by motor. Parched 
with thirst, we enquired whether it were possible to get some 
light beer, but were informed that only through the President 
of the Municipality could this be accomplished, as in the 
state-wide prohibition Dzibalché had suffered even worse 
than the capital, for the sale of both beer and light wines 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 183 


was prohibited here. We made a bee-line for the house of 
El Presidente, and found that he not only gave the per- 
mission, but dispensed the beer himself, and even so far 
honoured us as to join in the consumption. We reached 
the ranch house of San Luis safely soon after midday, over 
a very rough road, covered in places with great blocks of 
limestone six inches high, in others presenting perpendicular 
limestone ridges a foot high to be surmounted. San Luis 
is the property of Sefior Sixto Garcia, at one time one of the 
richest and most hospitable men in Yucatan, but now, 
unfortunately, an exile in Cuba, where, we were informed, he 
drove a taxi for a living in the city of Havana. It was 
almost exclusively a cattle and horse ranch, and, though 
running to thousands of acres of rough grazing, was one of 
the smallest of his vast possessions. These great estates, 
with immense tracts of land surrounding them, and their 
hundreds of peons practically the property of the ranchero, 
and actually transferred as assets with the ranch, have not 
prospered under the new régime, except in the henequen 
belt. The peons have been freed, and have either started 
fincas, or small farms, of their own, or have gone off to other 
employers, where they receive ten times their former wages. 
A great deal of the land has gone out of cultivation, the 
buildings are going to ruin, while the vancheros, formerly 
little less than reigning princes, are now for the most part 
eating the bitter bread of poverty in exile. San Luis 
presented a melancholy picture of this type of ranch ; the 
labourers’ houses are all empty and falling to pieces. Where 
formerly one hundred peons were regularly employed, the 
place is now in charge of an old man who acts as care- 
taker of the owner’s house, with one mozo to assist him, 
while the pasture is rapidly growing up in tough, wiry bush. 

On our arrival the old caretaker at once produced oranges, 
and promised eggs and tortillas as soon as his wife could get 
the fire going. A curious anomaly with regard to the orange 
supply in Yucatan is that whereas at almost any village the 
owner will give one a dozen oranges off his trees just as 


184 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


freely as he would a glass of water, and with as little idea 
of asking for payment, yet the selfsame orange, carried 
perhaps a hundred yards to the railway station (and with 
no change except that its green outer coat has been neatly 
sliced off, leaving it in its white underclothes for more 
convenient manipulation, ““ More Yucateco,”’ by slicing in 
two and sucking), sells for anything from five cents to ten 
cents gold to thirst-consumed passengers in this thirsty 
land. We had hoped to find a guide at San Luis, to the 
ruins of Holactun; but, all the peons having departed, we 
were, of course, disappointed, so set out for Xcalumkin 
Savanna, a vast extent of low bush and grass, hidden some- 
where within which we knew the ruins lay, in the hope that 
we might discover a guide there. The road was far worse 
than the one from Dzibalché to San Luis ; indeed, in places 
it was evidently the dry and very stony bed of a torrent 
which passed through the close, scrubby bush of the country, 
where we were compelled to lower the hood, which was 
getting torn to pieces by the numberless thorns and spines 
which every bush possesses. Our skins were protected 
only at the cost of constant vigilance, and even then I 
nearly had my left eyelid torn off. Soon the last vestige 
of a road disappeared, and we found ourselves pushing 
through sour grass and scrub, bumping over hidden rocks, 
trees and holes, where never motor-car had gone before. 
Many times we halted, and were on the verge of turning 
back, though we doubted our ability to find the way again 
to San Luis, but Morley’s enthusiasm where ruins were 
concerned drove us ever forward. We passed several ruins 
of small Maya temples of the usual type—quadrangular, 
with flat roof, Maya arched ceiling and ornamental cornice 
outside. All were in an advanced state of ruin, and none 
showed signs of sculpture of any sort, much less of an 
Initial Series inscription. 

We encountered several Indians, both men and women, 
struggling along under their loaded mecapals, or packs, 
slung from the forehead, but they were half sullen, half shy, 





TEMPLE OF THE INITIAL SERIES, HOLACTUN (XCALUMKIN). 
The Initial Series is seen between the pair of columns. 


[p. 185 





HOLACTUN (XCALUMKIN). 


SHOWING LOWER PART OF INITIAL SERIES, AND CARVED COLUMNS 
WITH CARVED LINTEL ONCE PLACED OVER THEM. 


[p. 185 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 185 


refused to answer except in monosyllables, and all dis- 
claimed any knowledge of the ruins for which we were 
searching. At length, however, our persistence was 
rewarded, as we came across a small cavalcade of Indian 
and Mestizo cargadores taking out corn on their wiry little 
ponies for sale in Dzibalché, amongst whom were several 
who knew the ruins well, and volunteered to act as guides. 
As it turned out, we were no great distance from them, and 
soon had the “ Fotingo”’ at the base of the plateau upon 
which they stood ; the first time in the world’s history, as 
far as we know, that a motor-car has visited a Maya Initial 
Series chez lu1. The temple, which stood on a small mound, 
formed one of a group of very similar temples in this part 
of the savanna, and, though by no means the largest or 
most imposing of them, was the only one to contain any 
kind of stone sculpture. It consisted of a single large room 
entered by a triple doorway, to the left of which was a 
much smaller room or sanctuary. The ceiling of both 
rooms is formed by a Maya arch. The walls are covered 
by a mosaic of small pyramidal stones, the smooth quad- 
rangular bases of which project outwards, and fit nearly 
together, while the pyramidal ends are buried in the sub- 
stance of the walls, which are very thick, and composed of 
a mass of mixed mortar and rubble. These stones, which 
line the interior, act in no sense as a support to the building, 
and in the figure it will be seen that many of them have 
fallen away without impairing its stability, a peculiarity 
of most Maya temples, where the walls are, as it were, 
monolithic, for which the squared stones covering the 
interior merely form a tessellated lining. The central and 
right-hand door jambs are neatly sculptured on their outer 
surfaces, each with a double row of six glyph blocks, making 
twenty-four glyphs in all. While parts of these are decipher- 
able, including several numerical coefficients, period ending 
signs, and lunar counts, the meaning of the inscription as 
a whole cannot, with our present knowledge of the glyphs, 
be elucidated. The same may be said of the inscription on 


186 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


the stone lintels. The left-hand jamb has sculptured upon 
that surface of it which faces the doorway a human figure, 
probably a priest, in very elaborate costume, consisting of 
enormous feather-decorated headdress, large round ear- 
plugs with dependent plumes, gorget of jewelled mosaic 
work, maxtli, or apron, decorated with bows, tags, and 
fringes, and large sandals, very elaborate and ornate. In 
his right hand he holds a ceremonial wand, and in his left 
a plume-decorated shield. 

By far the most interesting feature about the temple, 
however, is the Initial Series inscription, which in several 
respects is absolutely unique. As will be seen, it occupies 
a raised band on separate square stones, stretching from 
about half-way up the arch to the cornice which divides 
the arch from the wall, immediately opposite the doorway, 
where the light of the sun would fall most clearly upon it. 
The inscription contains eight glyphs, the topmost being 
the introducing glyph, which always precedes Initial Series 
inscriptions, and consists essentially of the katun sign, with 
three dots or scrolls as a superfix, and the same as a subfix. 
(In the photograph only the katun sign and three dots are 
visible.) This is the most important of all glyphs to recog- 
nise when doing archeological work in the Maya area, and 
every member of the expedition, from the humblest Indian 
up, should be as familiar with it as with the ubiquitous 
tortilla, if no Initial Series date is to be missed, as this sign 
alone is sufficient to prove without doubt that the inscrip- 
tion which follows is an Initial Series date. Immediately 
beneath it is a glyph consisting of two grotesque heads, the 
one on the right hand being undoubtedly the head variant 
for a cycle, or period of 400 years of 360 days; the one on 
the left is the head variant for the numeral denoting the 
number of cycles elapsed, and is unfortunately unknown to 
us, never having been encountered in any other Initial 
Series inscription. The cycle coefficient, however, must be 
either 9, 10, or I1, as these three cycles comprise all Maya 
history in which the Initial Series might be used here, and 


Zg1 ‘d] ggi *d] 
‘UMOP 9AOGe UWIOIF pest aq 0} ST (UMOYS st ATUO YOY Fo Ted IOMOT 
9y}) YdATD sutonpoIyUy ay} YIM SulousUTUIOD Sates [TeIPIUT oy y, “SHIMAS TVILINI AHI AO HIdNAL NI AVMYNOOAd 


‘(NIMNWATVOX) NOLOWIOH LV SAINAS 1VILINI do aNvf NO aun :(NIMWATVOX) NOLOWIOH 








IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 187 


as the number is neither 9, nor 10, the head equivalents for 
which are well recognised, it must, by a process of elimination, 
be 11. The next glyph beneath the cycle glyph shows two 
grotesque faces in front of a third grotesque face, which 
represents typically the head variant of the katun, or 20- 
year period sign. The two faces are the head variants 
for the number of katuns elapsed. Unfortunately, these 
are encountered as numerical coefficients for the first time. 
As 2 is the least frequently encountered number in the 
inscriptions, the fact that they are two in number may lead 
us to accept them provisionally as indicating two katuns. 
The glyph beneath the katun has unfortunately been a good 
deal defaced owing to the scaling off from the edges of the 
two stones upon which it is inscribed of a considerable 
amount of the carving, owing to the tremendous super- 
incumbent pressure of the roof falling chiefly on this point. 
The lower jaw of the right-hand face marks it as that of a 
head variant of the tun, or year sign, while the lower part 
of the left-hand face most closely resembles that of the head 
variant for eight, making 8 tuns. Below the tun sign the 
head variant for the uinal, or month sign, preceded by the 
head variant for four, is very clear, and below this the head 
variant for the kin, or day sign, preceded by the numeral 


nine written thus :] is clearer still. The whole inscription 


then reads thus: I1.2.8.4.9, being. 11 cycles, 2 katuns, 
8 tuns, 4 uinals, 8 kins, or 1,601,369 days after the date 
4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the day upon which Maya chronology 
commenced. 

Beneath the cornice, as a continuation of the band con- 
taining the Initial Series, is a further band containing eight 
double glyph blocks, reaching from the floor of the temple. 
The uppermost of these obviously records the day 7 Muluc, 
the seven being written above the sign for the day 
Muluc, denoting the day upon which the Initial Series 
ended. The month, however, and the position of the day 
in the month upon which it ended, are unfortunately 


188 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


omitted, though they can easily be worked out and arrive 
at 17 Tzec—that is, the day 7 Muluc occupying the 18th 
position in the month Tzec was the day upon which ended 
the Initial Series 11.2.8.4.9. The eighth or lowest of these 
glyph blocks contains a glyph which denotes an oxlahuntun, 
or 13-tun period, ending in 2 Ahau. On the left-hand door- 
jamb, not shown in the photograph, the same sign is again 
seen, preceded by a torch-like glyph designating a period 
ending. 

We may then take it that the contemporary date of the 
temple is the next oxlahuntun ending in 2 Ahau following 
the date 11.2.8.4.9.7 Muluc 17 Tzec, which the temple is 
erected to commemorate, or, in other words, it was erected 
in II.2.13.0.0, to commemorate an event which occurred in 
I1.2.8.4.9, or 1,711 days previously. Now the Initial Series 
is 11.2.8.4.9, and corresponds to 1012 A.D., while I1.2.13.0.0 
corresponds to I017 A.D., consequently the temple was 
erected in 1017 A.D. to commemorate an event as to the 
nature of which we have no indication, though such may well 
be recorded in the numerous indecipherable glyphs on the 
jambs, which occurred in 1012 A.D. This Initial Series is 
in many ways remarkable. In the first place, its position 
in a band along the arch of the ceiling and down the side 
of the wall is unique, Initial Series being almost invariably 
inscribed upon monoliths or panels. Next, it forms one of 
the only three known Initial Series hitherto discovered in 
Yucatan ; and lastly, its contemporary date is no less than 
16 katuns and 3 tuns, or approximately 318 solar years 
later than the next latest Initial Series, namely, that of 
Tuluum, which, it will be remembered, is 10.6.10.0.0. As 
we know, the cumbersome method of Initial Series dating 
in Yucatan had rapidly given way to the more convenient, 
if less accurate, method of period ending, calendar round, 
and katun procession dating ; and it seems almost incredible 
that in this one situation throughout the whole country the 
ancient method should have been reverted to after a desuetude 
of over three centuries. There can be little doubt but that 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 189 


the priests, though using the more handy methods of dating, 
still retained a knowledge of the “‘ long count,’ and could 
give the position of any day in it, but that they should 
employ this knowledge, so far as we know, but once in three 
‘centuries, is truly remarkable. 

The date 1017 A.D. occurred soon after the commence- 
ment of the Triple Alliance between the rulers of Uxmal, 
Chichen Itza, and Mayapan, ushering in the golden period 
of the Maya rule in Yucatan, which was to last for two 
centuries. It probably marked also a renaissance in art, 
architecture, and religion, and no doubt a wide extension of 
the population, now all at peace, and still pouring in thou- 
sands into the peninsula, especially in the neighbourhood of 
the three main towns of the alliance. MHolactun is only 
about sixteen miles to the west of Uxmal, and was no doubt 
one of the settlements founded about this time, so that there 
is nothing historically improbable in the date recorded by 
the Initial Series—quite the contrary—in fact, its historical 
probability is a further argument in favour of the reading 
being a correct one. 

We spent a couple of days at the ruins photographing, 
sketching, and exploring other small ruins in the vicinity ; 
and though we discovered quite a number of small temples, 
that of the Initial Series was the only one containing any 
sculpture whatever. The whole of the great Xcalumkin 
savanna must have been at one time densely populated, as 
ruined temples and buildings are to be found all over it, 
and what is now a sea of coarse grass and low bush, broken 
at long intervals by the small maize patch of some solitary 
Indian settler, was, at the time of the conquest, a vast 
cultivated plain, the bottom lands covered with fields of 
waving corn, and the higher points occupied by the palm 
and adobe houses of the people, which have completely 
disappeared centuries ago, and by the stone temples of their 
gods, now rapidly falling into ruins. 


CHAPTER XII 


Inconvenience of Sleeping in a Liquor Store even when Closed—Natives 
Turn Night Into Day—Superiority of Yucatecan Women of the 
Bourgeois Class to the Men Exemplified in our Hostess—Heavy 
Municipal Taxation—No Curas in the Villages Now—An Officious 
Jefe—Arrival in Campeche—The Hotel Guatemoc, Formerly the 
Governor’s Palace—Campeche, Formerly a Prosperous City, now 
Suffering from Dry Rot—Great Wall Surrounding the City—Two Fine 
Old Churches—Trouble in Clearing from and Entering Mexican 
Ports—Port of Campeche Silting Up—We Leave Campeche—An 
Unfortunate Accident—aArrival at Champoton—Rumour of German 
Wireless—Archeological Interest of Champoton—Strangers in Town— 
A Terrible Trek Across the Peninsula from East to West—The Campo 
Santo—Champoton a Decaying Town—Difference between Yucatecan 
and Campechano—We Leave Champoton—Seiba Playa—Return to 
Merida—Difficulty in Obtaining Old Books in Merida, dealing with 
Yucatan—Set Out for Xcanchacan—A Light-hearted Crowd of 
Natives—A Vast Ranch—Absolute Power of the Owner over his 
Servants—Indian Girls at Xcanchacan—Henequen Cultivation and 
Preparation of the Fibre—Stele with Important Katun Date at the 
Rancho—Arrival at the Ruined City of Mayapan—Primitive Means 
of Drawing Water—Destruction of Mayapan and Slaughter of the 
Cocomes—Some of the Reigning Family Probably Escaped. 


WE returned to Dzibalché from the ruins every night, 
having been lent the former liquor store of the town to sleep 
in. This was an immensely lofty room, with doors opening 
on to two streets, and would not have been uncomfortable 
but for the fact that when the doors were left open pigs, 
dogs, and children entered at all hours of the day and night 
to investigate, whereas if they were closed the haunting smell 
of new rum became too much for us who had not acquired a 
taste for it early in life. We dared not keep a light burning 
at night, as we found that old topers from the neighbour- 
hood were attracted by it, under the impression that pro- 
hibition had ceased, the drought was over, and the cantina 
again dispensing their favourite liquor. They routed us 


out at first at all hours of the night, and were never pleased 
190 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND IOI 


and not always civil at finding three sleeping gringoes instead 
of the hoped-for drinks. The Maya of Yucatan, like the 
people of India, have a curious disregard of the divisions 
of the day and night. They can sleep almost anywhere and 
at any time, while at no matter what hour of the night one 
may sally forth into the village streets, quietly-gliding, cotton- 
shrouded figures of men and women will be encountered 
going about on mysterious errands, and, when camping in 
the bush, they will sit half the night in interminable con- 
versation and tale telling, the gentle clicks of their remark- 
able language, insistent and monotonous, soon acting as a 
peaceful lullaby to the listener. At 3 a.m. or even earlier 
the subdued scrunch of mistamal being ground by the lady 
of the house on her stone hand-mill for the breakfast corn 
cakes becomes audible, to the accompaniment of the same 
gentle but ceaseless click of conversation, punctuated in 
this case by restrained gusts and gurgles of feminine laughter, 
of which one may guess that they themselves, their out- 
landish manners and customs and appearance, are the main 
cause. 

Candelario—or Candy, as we generally called him—very 
kindly gave us early coffee in the morning at his home 
before leaving for the ruins, and dinner—or, rather, supper— 
on returning. These dinners form one of the pleasantest 
memories connected with the whole trip, and it must be 
admitted that we both fell violently in love with Mrs. Candy 
the first day we met her. Pretty, gentle, tastefully dressed, 
well educated, intelligent, and natural, she hardly appeared 
a fitting mate for her husband, who, though a kindly and 
excellent little man, was, after all, only an ordinary peon, 
who by thrift and hard work had managed to purchase a 
Ford, with which he was then making a very good living. 

We had noticed time and again that the Yucatecan 
woman of the bourgeois class is almost invariably more 
refined and better educated than her husband, and Mrs. 
Candy was but a more convincing proof of this fact. She 
acted as hostess with the utmost tact and freedom from 


192 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


affectation, chatting to us about the European War, Mexican 
and local politics, the position of women in Yucatan, and 
even Maya folklore and archeology, on all of which subjects 
she was evidently well informed, and capable of expressing an 
intelligent opinion. She spoke Maya and Spanish fluently, 
and English to some extent, and possessed a delicate sense 
of humour, a rare and priceless gift in a woman of any 
nationality. Whilewetalked, Candy sat silently listening, nor 
could he be induced to join in the conversation ; but it was 
delightful to see how devoted the two were to each other— 
more like young lovers, indeed, than the parents of two 
charming babies. Yet Mrs. Candy was born in Dzibalché of 
parents of very much the same social status as her husband. 
She had been educated there, and had never been farther than 
Merida ; and where she and a thousand other young Yucate- 
can girls of the same class acquired their gentle manners, 
good taste, intelligence, and sympathy is difficult to surmise, 
unless they were heritages handed down from their great 
ancestors who ruled the land before the coming of the 
Spaniards. Everyone we encountered in Dzibalché was 
most bitter in their denunciation of the exactions of the 
Mayor, who was a nominee of the Federal Government and 
not one of themselves. Everything was taxed to the utmost 
farthing, and even if one asked a few friends in to dine or 
dance, a fee for so doing had to be paid to the Municipality, 
or the omission was sure to be followed by a heavy fine. 
We started to explore the fine old church, which we found 
open that day, as the only cura in the State had come over 
from Campeche to celebrate a wedding; a state of things 
which we could not help contrasting with that of Stephens’ 
day, when every village had its own cura, who almost 
invariably acted as kindly, cultured host to the explorer 
and to whose good offices not a little of the comfort and 
pleasure of his trip through Yucatan was due. Hardly 
had we entered the church when a constable came along 
from the “ Jefe’’ to say the church was the property of the 
Municipality, we were trespassing in it, and must come along 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 193 


at once and answer for our crime. We told him to go and 
inform the Jefe, with our compliments, that we carried 
letters from the Governor of the State requesting all officers 
of the Government to assist us by every means in their power 
in our archeological investigations, and that under the 
circumstances we could hardly report to His Excellency on 
our return that the Chief of the Dzibalché Municipality had 
done his best to carry out these orders. The message 
evidently proved effective, as we were molested no more 
during our stay in the town. On the 3rd we took sorrowful 
leave of Candy, his wife, and a group of friends whom, 
though newly made, we really regretted leaving, and made 
a triumphal procession to the railroad station in the motor- 
car, where we found the curva, a stout, red-faced, full-fed 
looking individual surrounded by a group of female members 
of his flock, who seemed unwilling to part with him, and were 
pressing on him light refreshments for his tedious forty-five 
mile train journey. 

We arrived at Campeche in excellent time for a late 
breakfast, and made our way at once to the Hotel Guatemoc, 
which has a great reputation for what Yucatecans term 
“sea food,” including fish, lobsters, oysters, and crayfish. 
Here we were pleased to encounter Held, who had come 
round on the Lilian Y by sea, sailing all the way in order to 
economise gasolene, and putting in at every little fishing 
village and settlement en route. We had an excellent break- 
fast, consisting of turkey, soup, oysters, lobster salad ; and 
afterwards an hour’s siesta in a really magnificent and palatial 
chamber, for the old hotel had been the Governor’s palace 
in the brave days of the Spanish occupation, and still showed 
traces, in its decoration and the spaciousness of its rooms, of 
viceregal occupation. We had a bath in a real bathroom, 
where we simply stood in a drained enclosure and allowed 
floods of rainwater—not the miserable, strictured trickle 
usually afforded by the shower pipe in Yucatan—to deluge 
our thirsty skins, which had not enjoyed such a treat since 
leaving Merida. In the cool of the evening we strolled 

NL 


194 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


forth to see the town, which to the visitor straight from 
Merida forms a strange contrast to that busy, bustling, 
up-to-date little city. Campeche, with its narrow, dirty 
streets, iron-barred windows, and air of perpetual siesta, is 
obviously a relic of the past, a typical ancient Spanish 
town, where people and city are succumbing peacefully and 
painlessly together to the dry rot of old age. Yet the city 
in its day has seen more stirring times probably than any 
city in the peninsula, for it was the great objective point of 
buccaneers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who 
haunted the shallow bay of Campeche, awaiting the passage 
of the richly freighted galleons and plate ships of Spain on 
their way from Vera Cruz to Cuba and to Europe. Many of 
these carried millions of dollars’ worth of bullion, sufficient 
to enable a whole ship’s company to retire from their 
hazardous profession and live in the odour of sanctity for 
the rest of their lives. Campeche was stormed and taken 
by English and French buccaneers on no less than three 
occasions within twenty-six years, till in 1692 the citizens, 
assisted by the Spanish Government, built a great wall 
round it. This took seventy years to complete and cost 
250,000 dollars (a vast sum in those days, before the intro- 
duction of facile millions). It was 26ft. high by 12ft. thick, 
and was surrounded by a deep moat. It covered an irregular 
seven-sided polygon, with bastions at each angle and massive 
forts along the water-side. The greater part of it has now 
been pulled down, and the work of demolition is still pro- 
ceeding, yet enough remains to show what a vast under- 
taking it must have been for a comparatively small popula- 
tion. We passed two magnificent old churches. One, whose 
facade is decorated after the Moorish style in exquisite 
coloured tiles, has had a modern stone house built within a 
few yards of it, completely obscuring the ancient decoration, 
while one of its towers has been converted into a lighthouse. 
In the other the one remaining cura in the State, who had 
accompanied us from Dzibalché, still officiates from time 
to time. On returning to the “‘ Guatemoc ”’ we anticipated, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 195 


after our excellent breakfast, an equally excellent dinner, 
but were somewhat disappointed to find that it consisted 
only of the cold remains of the morning’s turkey, and when 
breakfast next morning dwindled to eggs and bread and 
butter (the last supplied by ourselves from a tin, as none 
was to be obtained in the town), we concluded it was about 
time to move on. On reaching the Custom House we dis- 
covered that the same wearisome and expensive business 
of clearing the Lilian Y had to be gone through again. 
She had just arrived from Progreso via Rio Jaina, fifteen 
miles away, and was bound for Champoton, some forty 
miles to the south ; all in the same country, and, excepting 
Progreso, in the same State; yet a fresh clearance, bill of 
health, and all the endless papers connected withclearing from 
a port had to be taken out. All through our trip we had 
found this business of clearing the ship the greatest nuisance. 
Though we had travelled throughout the entire trip from 
one Mexican port to another, at each place fresh papers had 
to be got out, entailing endless delays. Yet our boat was 
a small one, carried no cargo, and had the highest recom- 
mendations from the principal authorities with whom we 
came in contact. She had the misfortune, however, to be 
English registered, and the Mexicans freely admit that they 
wish to retain their coastal traffic for their own boats, and 
had we been Mexican registered we should not have encoun- 
tered these delays and heavy fees. The Administrador of 
the Customs recommended us to an agent whose business 
it was to get the clearance, bill of health, etc., assembled 
and in order from the various Government Departments 
where they were issued. After some trouble we ran him 
to earth, and found a very ancient gentleman, with long 
white beard, of stately demeanour and very deliberate 
action. After a time we got him going, and about midday 
arrived at the Customs Office with all our papers in order, 
and so at length got safely away. We could not get even 
the shallow-draft Lilian Y up to the wharf in Campeche, 
as the water is gradually silting up ; indeed, the port does 


196 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


but little business now, and unless dredging operations are 
undertaken will soon do none at all. 

We arrived off Champoton in the afternoon, and Morley, 
Held, and myself went ashore. It is a town of 1,000 to 
1,500 inhabitants, situated at the mouth of the Rio Champo- 
ton, along which a good deal of the products of the hinterland 
bush, chiefly chicle, rubber, and logwood, are brought out. 
We had heard before setting out on our trip to Yucatan 
that Champoton was a hot-bed of German spies, who ran 
there openly a wireless outfit. We discovered that the 
wireless rumour originated in two 6oft. posts, which carried 
the Mexican telegraph wires across the mouth of the river 
sufficiently high up to admit of sailing boats passing under- 
neath, and which at a glance from the sea strongly resembled 
wireless aerials. The only foundation we could find for the 
Hun rumour was the presence of a manager at a ranch some 
way inland, who, it was reported, might be a German, as 
he was certainly not a native Yucatecan! Champoton is a 
place of some historical and archeological interest, owing 
to the fact that it is the site of the sojourn of the Itzas 
between their first exodus from Chichen Itza, about 700 A.D., 
and their return to that city two centuries and a half later. 
There are considerable traces of ruins in the neighbourhood, 
but all in a very poor state of preservation, partly, no doubt, 
owing to the fact that they have been systematically 
wrecked to obtain building stone. Only two strangers lived 
in Champoton ; one a cura, whose occupation had departed 
on the closing of the churches by the Government, but who 
had turned his talents to account as a billiard-marker ; the 
other a black boy, a native of Belize, who had been working 
for the American Chicle Company at Bacalar, on the eastern 
side of the peninsula, at the time of the great hurricane. 
Like many more chicle bleeders, he had been shut in the 
bush by the obliteration of all roads and trails owing to the 
complete flattening out of the forest under the tremendous 
force of the hurricane. Most of these men had made their 
way out after weeks of incredible toil and hardship, but 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 197 


many never made their way out at all, leaving their bones 
to whiten in the bush. The case of this boy was, however, 
perhaps the most remarkable of all, for though a frail youth 
of poor physique and no great intelligence, and with no 
particular knowledge of bush craft, he made his way clean 
across the base of the peninsula from east to west over a 
practically trackless stretch of forest and swamp, with no 
inhabitants beyond, at great intervals, a few chicle and 
rubber bleeders. He must have covered in all nearly a 
couple of hundred miles before he happened to encounter 
a band of chicle bleeders not far from Champoton. He had 
managed to subsist on such leaves, fruit, roots, and insects 
as he could pick up along the route, and, of course, was 
never at a loss for water. When found he was reduced to 
very little more than skin and bones, and his mind was 
somewhat fogged as a result of the terrible privations. How 
long he had taken over the journey he was unable to say, 
as he had lost all count of time, but such a trip accom- 
plished alone, and without food or equipment of any kind, 
postulates tremendous vitality and dogged perseverance, 
which one would hardly have expected to find in a youth 
apparently so poorly equipped, both mentally and physic- 
ally. We shipped him on the Lilian Y and promised to 
take him back to his family in Belize, whom he had not 
seen for many months, and by whom he had presumably 
been given up as dead; but at Progreso, finding wages 
high and prospects good, he left us silently, nor stood upon 
the order of his going. 

The campo santo, or burial-ground, at Champoton is about 
the only thing worth visiting in the place. It is very neatly 
kept, and the dead, or at least those of them who were 
well-to-do in life, are provided with miniature houses, 
some of them almost large enough to have been used as 
habitations by the living, kept nicely painted and white- 
washed. Champoton, like Campeche, is suffering from the 
dry rot of old age. On the outskirts of the town the 
arcaded ruins of the former Governor’s palace and of 


198 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


ecclesiastical buildings are seen falling rapidly into ruins, 
while many of the larger and better-class houses are empty. 
For some reason the Campechano, though of practically 
the same race—mixed Indian and Spanish—as his brother 
the Yucateco, is quite lacking in the energy and commercial 
acumen of the latter, and is content to accept as his watch- 
word the good old Spanish proverb, ‘‘ Manvana, no hoy ’— 
“To-morrow, not to-day’’—which for the last three 
centuries has been the béte noive of Latin Americans. 

We left Champoton that night and turned back towards 
Campeche, having reached the southern limit of our trip, 
and the last place in this direction at which we might expect 
to encounter relics of the ancient Maya civilisation. We 
anchored off Seiba Playa, about twenty-five miles north of 
Champoton, and spent the night on the Lilian Y. Next 
morning early we went ashore in the pram to visit the 
pueblo, which is an exceedingly primitive village of 800 
Mayas and Yucatecans, with one solitary black man, who 
seemed to be retained as a sort of curiosity. The only 
industries are fishing and agriculture. The people are 
self-supporting, and rarely come in contact with anyone 
from the outside world, so that our advent was looked upon 
as quite an event. 

We were told here of ancient ruins a few miles back in the 
bush, but, on learning that they were mere heaps of stones, 
made up our minds that it was hardly worth while visiting 
them. 

Strolling along the beach, we picked up some perfectly 
gorgeous shells, many of them in excellent preservation, 
with their colours bright and undimmed, and some of them 
species which we had not observed before. This would 
be a conchologist’s paradise, as for some reason the sandy 
bay, bounded by rocky promontories, seems to act as 
dumping-ground for every variety of shell-fish known in 
the Gulf of Mexico. We were followed along the beach by a 
little queue of children, who were greatly entertained at 
our picking up quantities of what to them were too common 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 199 


even for playthings, and who evidently regarded us as 
un poco loco, or a little crazy. 

We reached Campeche about noon, and lunched again at 
the “‘Guatemoc”’ on a rich selection of sea products. 
While at table in the restaurant of the hotel we had forcibly 
brought home to us what one notices at all eating-places in 
Yucatan—the constant annoyance to which guests are 
subjected from all sorts of casual strangers, who come up 
and address one on the flimsiest pretext. The natives are 
so used to this as apparently not to object to it in the least. 
On this occasion we were attacked in turn by four im- 
portunate sellers of the Voz de la Revolucion, the Govern- 
ment daily paper; three boot-blacks, who, although our 
boots had been operated on in the plaza just before coming 
in, were insistent on giving them another polish; two 
unequivocal beggars seeking caridad; and one _ gentle- 
man in charge of a subscription list for the relief of 
a destitute old man—not a bad bag for one solitary 
half-hour ! 

We took the afternoon train for Merida, where we arrived 
the same evening quite pleased to find ourselves back again 
in the “‘ Gran Hotel.’”’ We spent the whole of Wednesday, 
the 6th, in Merida, chiefly in visiting book-shops and private 
dealers in books in a vain quest after the Historia de Y ucathan 
by the Provincial Diego Cogolludo, containing information 
concerning the manners, customs, and history of the Maya 
absolutely indispensable to the student of Maya archeology. 
We were unable to obtain a single copy of either volume 
for love or money in Merida, but succeeded in obtaining, 
through a bookseller from Mexico City, an edition of the first 
volume published in Campeche in 1842, and of the second 
published in Merida in 1845, bound in a single volume. 
We heard only of one copy of the original edition, for 
which the owner asked 1,500 dollars, but the work in any 
form is exceedingly difficult to acquire, as only 100 copies 
of the Campeche edition were published, and but 200 of the 
Merida edition. Books dealing with the antiquities of the 


200 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


country are difficult to obtain in Merida, while the prices 
asked are simply outrageous. Such works as John L. 
Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, 
and Yucatan, and his later volume, Incidents of Travel in 
Yucatan, sell for four or five times what they can be bought 
for in Europe or the States at any book-dealers, while 
Molina Solis’ Historta de la Conquista de Yucatan, published 
in 1896, but now out of print, sells at more than ten times 
its original cost. In Yucatan, books, like every other 
commodity where the stranger is concerned, are taxed 
for all that the traffic will bear. 

We caught the 5.30 a.m. train on the morning of the 7th 
by an exceedingly narrow margin and were again reduced 
to sticky, thirst-provoking sponge cakes, snatched up en 
route, to break our fast. However, this did not matter so 
much, as our destination was only about twenty miles from 
Merida—the ruins of Mayapan, situated on the rancho of 
Xcanchacan. 

On arrival at the station we changed on to a mule-drawn 
flat car running from the main line up a narrow gorge to 
the ranch house, on which we squeezed ourselves, in amongst 
a great crowd of laughing, chattering Indian girls and children, 
wives and kiddies of labourers on the ranch, some of them 
going up there to do light work themselves. A gayer and 
more light-hearted crowd it would be impossible to imagine ; 
everything was treated as a joke specially got up for their 
benefit. The loss of my hat from a puff of wind gave rise 
to roars of laughter, and even the derailing of the car, which 
might have resulted in a nasty accident—and did result 
in half an hour’s tedious wait in the sun—only produced an 
increase of hilarity. An endeavour on Held’s part (who 
always improved the shining hour on these lines) to carry on 
a mild flirtation with his pretty neighbour through. the 
medium of about ten Maya words, and that language of the 
eyes and lips which is the same all the world over, was a 
source of pure joy to all beholders, including Morley and 
myself. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 201 


The ranch house, one of the largest in Yucatan, is an 
immense one-storied stone mansion over 300ft. long, with a 
deep, tiled piazza in front, whose vault-like coolness, en- 
hanced by a gentle breeze, proved a delightful change from 
the glaring heat of the sun outside. The rooms were large, 
lofty, well ventilated, stone-floored, and consequently very 
cool and comfortable, but it must be admitted that from a 
European point of view they were bare and sparsely fur- 
nished ; no pictures, carpets, knick-knacks, or ornaments— 
just the bare chairs, lounges, and hammocks. The estate 
belongs to the Peon family, one of the oldest and richest in 
Yucatan, who hold their titles from the Spanish Crown, and 
whose occupation goes back practically to the conquest. 
For size it could put many a European principality to shame, 
with its hundreds of thousands of acres. At one time the 
power of the owner was that of an absolute monarch, for 
he administered the high justice, the middle, and the low 
over his labourers—or, rather, slaves—whose ancestors had 
been made over to him by the Crown after the conquest of 
the Indians, and who were themselves just as much his 
property as the acres upon which they toiled. 

We sat in the shade of the great corridor, as Stephens had 
done nearly eighty years previously, and watched, as he 
had done, the Indian girls going to the well, situated in the 
great stone yard on the opposite side of the hacienda, for 
water. All were extremely graceful, slow and deliberate 
in their movements, and with heavy taza balanced on the 
head, lightly supported by one upraised, beautifully- 
modelled bare arm, arrow-straight figure, and majestic walk, 
were worthy models for a sculptor. 

The majority were of the usual Maya olive or light bronze 
colour, with thick black hair, dark-brown eyes, and 
beautiful complexions, but not a few showed a strain of 
Andalusian blood, and one or two were light-haired, blue- 
eyed, and fair complexioned—throwbacks, perhaps, to 
some Norwegian buccaneer ancestor who had harried the 
coast 200 years ago. Some passed us with eyes demurely 


202 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


cast upon the tiles, others with a smirk possibly of greeting, 
but more probably of amusement at our—to them—strange 
appearance, while a few unmistakably threw us what John 
Held classified as the “ glad eye,” in response, I think, to 
his expansive smile. 

After a rest we took a tour of inspection round the hacienda. 
On every side, as far as the eye could reach, were vast fields 
of henequen, or Agave Americana, from which is derived 
the sisal fibre, practically the only export of the country, 
which makes it, for its size and population, one of the richest 
in the world. These aloes are planted in rows at regular 
intervals ; each one stands from 3ft. to 4ft. high, and con- 
sists of a central core, attached to which are great, thick, 
tough, dark-green leaves, 3ft. to 4ft. long, 5in. or 6in. broad, 
each tipped at the point with a huge black thorn. The outer 
leaves are cut from each plant at frequent intervals and 
carried to the mill, where they are beaten and scraped till 
all the pulp is removed, and only the beautifully white silky 
fibre remains. This is hung on wires in the sun to dry, and 
all round the hacienda were drying-grounds, with children 
at work changing the hanks of fibre from side to side on 
the wires till they were dried all over by the sun. Lastly 
they are compressed in hydraulic presses into great bundles 
bound with hoop iron, in which form they are exported to 
the U.S.A., where, converted into thin, loosely-woven rope, 
they bind the sheaves of corn cut by the reapers from 
Canada to Mexico. 

The whole vast estate is covered with a network of light 
railroad, on which the labourers ride to work, and along 
which the stacks of cut leaves are brought in to the mill. 

On returning to the hacienda we discovered an extremely 
interesting relic of the past—no less, indeed, than a stone 
stele about Oft. high, brought by a former owner from the 
ruins of Mayapan, and carefully built into the wall of the 
corridor, where, preserved from the weather, it should last 
practically for ever. The top of the stone is rounded, and 
the upper third of its surface is divided into thirty-six more 


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IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 203 


or less equal spaces by incised lines, which probably origin- 
ally each contained a painted glyph. Below this is a zone 
of incised geometrical ornamentation, followed by a band 
consisting of ten quadrangular spaces, and below this again, 
roughly and crudely cut in low relief, are seen two human 
figures. The figure on the left as one looks at the stele is 
much the smaller, and stands upon a low altar, or stool. 
His headdress is composed of a highly conventionalised 
bird, and he holds in both hands an indeterminate object, 
which he is apparently offering to the figure on the rght. 
This is undoubtedly meant to represent Cuculcan, or the 
Long-nosed God, one of the most popular deities through- 
out Yucatan. (Compare the face of the god as shown here 
with the representation of him in the painted stucco at 
Tuluum). The god holds in his right hand a ceremonial 
club, or baton, while his left arm is held in front of him 
semiflexed. He wears the usual feather-decorated head- 
dress, and large round ear-plug, with pendant. 

The most interesting and important part of the whole 
sculpture, however, is the date glyph, which is quite clear 
and unmistakable. It is situated between the upper part 
of the club held in the right hand of the figure of the god 
and the headdress of his worshipper, and records the date 
ro Ahau; that is to say that the stele was erected 
to commemorate the end of Katun ro Ahau. A = 
crack filled in with light-coloured cement passes 
obliquely across the centre of the stele, and this crack 
crosses the Ahau sign about its centre. 

There is recorded in the books of Chilam Balam, in which 
are given the procession of the katuns and the most import- 
ant events occurring in each, one date with meticulous 
accuracy, namely, the death of a certain native chief named 
Napot Xiu, which is said to have occurred in a Katun 13 
Ahau, while yet 6 tuns (periods of 360 days) were lacking 
before the end of the katun, on the day g Imix, which was 
the 18th day of the month Zip. The chronicler further 
states that this event took place in the year of our Lord 


204 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


1536. It is obvious, therefore, that the end of this Katun 
13 Ahau occurred 6 tuns later, or somewhere in the year 
1542 A.D. The Maya did not number their 13 katuns from 
I to 13, but in the following order: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 13, II, 
9, 7, 5, 3, I, 12, 10, so that, granting the end of Katun 13 
Ahau fell within the year 1542, it is obvious that the end 
of Katun ro Ahau, counting backwards, fell 5 katuns, or 
too tuns, or 36,000 days earlier—that is, within the year 
1438 A.D., which is the contemporary date of this stele. 
Of course, it must be remembered that a Katun ro Ahau 
recurred every 13 x 20, or 260 tuns, that is, every 256 years, 
so that it fell also in the year 1182 A.D., but both on stylistic 
and historical grounds this date may be rejected. 

After an excellent breakfast provided by the major-domo, 
Morley, Held, and myself, accompanied by a guide, set out 
on horseback for the ruins of Mayapan. 

At first the road led through vast and apparently inter- 
minable fields of henequen, criss-crossed in all directions 
by light railroads, but at length we got beyond the henequen 
zone into a vast, flat, sterile plain, covered with short grass 
burnt yellow by the sun, interspersed with stones and 
patches of low prickly bush. It must be admitted that the 
name of the ranch, Xcanchacan, or Kanchacan, derived 
from the Maya, kan, yellow, and chacan, a plain or savanna, 
expresses well its appearance. We passed the remains of a 
great stone wall, now completely in ruins, which our guide 
told us surrounded a more or less square enclosure two 
miles in each direction, and followed it up in both directions 
for a short distance, but as there was nothing to be gained 
by making a complete circuit, and, moreover, the going was 
very bad, we soon continued on our way to the little ranch 
house close to the ruins, where we off-saddled and set out on 
foot for a great mound standing up commandingly from 
the plain, less than a quarter of a mile away. We encoun- 
tered a few half-starved cattle, horses, and mules, whose 
living on this scorched pasture, which did not look as if it 
could carry one head of stock to twenty acres, must, indeed, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 205 


have been a poor one, and at the little ranch house we 
observed water being drawn by a wheel turned by a patient 
horse from a deep well, which flowed into troughs for the 
benefit of the stock. This primitive contrivance is very 
rare in Yucatan now, as nearly all the water used is raised 
from the bowels of the earth by American windmills, fleets 
of which form the most prominent objects scattered over 
every town, and without which even the smallest hacienda 
is rarely found. Of all the ruined sites of Yucatan, Mayapan 
is perhaps the most disappointing to the archeologist and 
explorer visiting it for the first time with some historical 
knowledge of its former importance amongst the Maya. 
From about 1000 A.D. to 1200 A.D. this city formed, with 
Chichen Itza and Uxmal, a Triple Alliance which ruled the 
whole peninsula during the golden period of the Maya 
occupation of Yucatan. About 1200 A.D., owing to a quarrel 
between the Halach Uinic, or ruler of Chichen Itza, and his 
ally of Mayapan, war broke out between the two cities, 
which ended only by the calling in of Toltec mercenaries 
from Chiapas to assist the armies of Mayapan, who were 
getting decidedly the worst of it. This ended in the 
complete overthrow of the Itzas and the domination of the 
Cocoms, the ruling family of Mayapan, over their former 
allies of Chichen Itza, and, indeed, over the whole Maya 
area. The Cocoms then became the overlords of all the 
petty kings and caciques, and compelled them to reside for 
a certain period every year in the city of Mayapan, around 
which they built a great stone wall, remains of which we 
passed on our way to the ruins, where each vassal lord had 
his own palace and temple, his own priests and retainers, 
and outside the walls of which he was allowed to house 
servants and stewards, who collected his revenue and 
supplied the wants of himself, his priests, and his more 
immediate retainers. This remarkable state of affairs 
lasted for no less than 250 years—till the year 1450 A.D., 
in fact, the vassal chiefs and their subjects being kept well 
under subjection by the Toltec mercenaries and their 


206 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


descendants, to whom the Cocoms appear to have handed 
over the city of Chichen Itza. At length, driven desperate 
by the overbearing arrogance of the Cocoms and by the 
exaction of their Toltec mercenaries, the subject lords of 
Yucatan revolted against the Cocoms, and under the 
leadership of the ruler of Uxmal made war upon them. This 
set the whole country in a blaze, and a fierce civil war raged 
amongst the Maya for anumber of years, till sometime during 
Katun 8, or about 1448 a.D., the city of Mayapan was taken 
and utterly destroyed, the whole of the royal family being 
slain with the exception of one son, who was absent in 
Honduras. Though, according to the native chroniclers, 
the whole Cocom family was exterminated with this one 
exception, the probabilities are that several other members 
of the royal family escaped, and fled the peninsula, for there 
exists to-day amongst the Indians of British Honduras and 
of the province of Peten, in Guatemala, families of Cocoms 
so much superior to the other Indians in physique, appear- 
ance, and mentality, as to give one the impression that they 
belong to a different race. They are, moreover, in some 
cases associated in the minds of the other Indians with a 
vague idea of royalty or nobility possessed in the old days. 
The destruction of Mayapan must, indeed, have been com- 
plete, as the contemporary accounts relate, for at the 
present day hardly one stone is left standing upon another, 
and practically all that remains is the great stone-faced 
pyramids, or substructures, upon which the temples stood. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Return to Merida—Set Out for Dzitas—Travelling by Volan Coche and 
on Horseback—First View of the Ruins of Chichen Itza—The Casa 
Principal and its Legend of Buried Treasure—Attacked by Marching 
Army of Ants—The Monjas said to have been used as a Nunnery by 
the Maya—The Iglesia—Tradition that Maya came originally from 
India—The Akatzib—The Caracol—The Chichanchob, or Red House 
The High Priest’s Grave—lInscription Giving the Dateof Its Erection 
—Burial Chambers found within it—Probably a Royal Mausoleum— 
The Ball Court—Temples at each end of it—Curious Acoustic 
Properties—Herrera’s Account of the Aztec Game of Ball—Frag- 
ments of Incense Burners found amongst Débris of Ball Court of 
Much Later Date—The Temple of the Jaguars—The Serpent God— 
Painted Sculpture—Paintings on Stucco—The Castillo—Description 
of the Temple—Wanton Damage to Wood Carving—Temples of Owl 
and Phalli, Old Chichen Itza. 

ON our return to Merida we determined to remain there for 

a few days while laying in a stock of provisions for our stay 

at Chichen Itza, the largest and most spectacular ruins of a 

New Empire Maya city throughout Yucatan. On March 

7th we left the capital by one of the usual uncomfortable 

5.30 a.m. trains for the town of Dzitas, the nearest point on 

the Yucatan railroad to Chichen Itza, from which it is 

distant about twenty miles. On arriving in Dzitas we found 
that two methods of reaching the ruins were available—by 

*Volan Coche”’ or on horseback. The Volan, as it is 

usually called, was, before the coming of the railroad, 

practically the only means of transport throughout Yucatan, 
and a more uncomfortable conveyance it would be difficult 
to conceive. It consists of a high wooden cart entirely 
devoid of springs, and drawn by two, three, or four mules. 

The passenger lies, sits, or reposes as best he may at the 

bottom of the cart, which, with the sides, is well padded 


207 


208 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


with mattresses and pillows. The driver, usually an Indian, 
squats in front and drives. The roads are simply broad 
_ tracks cut through the bush over the limestone surface. 
Great boulders and ridges of limestone are left, and over 
these the volan jolts and rocks, taking everything in its 
stride, the mules keeping up a good hand-gallop most of the 
way. To the new-comer it is perfect torture, as he is thrown 
from side to side and up and down in the volan like a 
shuttlecock, and it is quite useless to try and stop the driver 
once he has started the mules, as he takes no notice whatever 
of the most piteous cries, till he has reached his destination. 
Having had considerable experience with the volan, we de- 
termined to send on our luggage by one of them while we 
proceeded on horseback. But even here we were unfor- 
tunate, for the only four horses available were miserable 
little skinny, thirteen-hand ponies, so dejected and worn 
that we hesitated to mount them, especially as the saddles 
were on a par with the mounts, and the bridles and stirrup 
leathers of rope. Soon after starting, finding that I was 
riding with my knees nearly up to my chin, I endeavoured 
to lengthen the stirrup ropes, but discovered they were not 
adjustable, so changed horses with Morley, whose legs were 
better adapted by nature to the short stirrups. We were 
passed by a volan going at a great pace, occupied by 
an enormously stout woman and a child; they were being 
volleyed about in all directions by the jolting of the vehicle, 
but did not appear to mind it in the least, though I could 
not help wondering what would have happened if the lady 
had landed on the child. 

Our progress was slow and uncomfortable, and by the 
time we arrived at the ruins we were quite tired out, as 
constant urging had been necessary the whole way to get the 
unfortunate little ponies to move at all. Our first view of 
the ruins, however, amply compensated us for all our 
trouble, as, coming suddenly round a bend, we had presented 
before us, perhaps a quarter of a mile away through a broad 
straight cutting in the bush, the splendid structure known 





CHICHEN ITZA: LINTEL IN WATER TROUGH AT HACIENDA. 


The uppermost line of the inscription shows plainly the lower part of the 11 Kan 
and 14 Cumhu, as well as the winged Cauac tun sign. 


[p. 209 





THE MONJAS, OR HOUSE OF THE NUNS, CHICHEN ITZA, 
WITH THE SIGLESIAS AT THE. RIGHT: 


[p. 210 








7" 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND | 209 


as the Castillo, perhaps the most spectacular monument 
now standing in the Maya area, and certainly one of the 
best preserved. 

Passing the Castillo, we arrived shortly at the Hacienda 
or Casa Principal, the house of the owner of the ranch, which 
had been placed at our disposal during our stay. It is a 
fine, large, cool house, having extensive verandas, built about 
the middle of the eighteenth century with stone taken from the 
ruins. The first owner was a recluse who had amassed a 
large sum of money in gold coin. He lived at the Hacienda, 
attended only by a Belize Negro man and an old Spanish 
woman. Feeling that his end was near, and not wishing 
that his relatives should benefit by his death, he sent these 
two old retainers off one morning to Valladolid, the nearest 
town, with instructions to take the whole day off. On 
returning at night, they found the old man dead in bed, and 
the treasure gone, the presumption being that he had 
found just sufficient strength to get up and secrete the 
treasure, either in the house or somewhere near at hand in 
the ruins, but, the excitement proving too much, he had 
returned to his bed to die. 

On being notified of the old man’s death, the relatives at 
once instituted a search for the treasure, half pulling the 
house down and digging the floor up in the hope of finding 
a secret hiding-place, and even going so far as to excavate 
in some of the closer buildings amongst the ruins ; all to no 
purpose, however, as they found nothing. Ever since it has 
been a favourite sport amongst the Indians, and other 
visitors, to take an occasional dig, in the hope of coming 
across the treasure accidentally. 

Around the house was an immense stone yard used at one 
time for cattle, but now empty except for our ponies. Inset 
in a stone water-trough which had been constructed for the 
cattle to drink out of is a large slab of stone from the ruins, 
set in upside down, upon which is inscribed a calendar round 
date with the wrong numerical coefficient in front of the month 


sign, a most unusual mistake for a Maya sculptor to make. 
OL 


210 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


I elected to sleep in the yard that night, as it was much 
cooler, but regretted my decision, as in the early hours of 
the morning I was awakened by a painful stinging and 
nipping all over my body, and discovered that I had been 
attacked by myriads of large brown ants known as the 
“marching army,” who had crawled up the legs of the cot 
and were endeavouring to make a meal off me. I jumped 
out of bed, brushing as many off as possible, woke the others, 
and with all the servants of the hacienda we attacked the 
invaders with torches made of dry palm leaf. We must have 
burnt millions of them, but still more millions came on, and 
it was only after a couple of hours’ strenuous work that we 
succeeded in driving them from the yard and returned again 
to bed. These ants are a terrible scourge in Yucatan, and 
will often drive the Indians from their homes, when they 
pass through, devouring everything en route. Birds and 
animals in cages are left as balls of feathers, or fur, and bones, 
and no doubt if a man or woman were unable to escape 
nothing would be left of them but bones. They possess, 
however, one advantage in that they eat up all scorpions, 
cockroaches, tarantulas, and other noxious insects which 
always infest thatched houses. 

Next morning, directly after coffee we started a survey 
of the ruins, beginning with the Casa de Monjas, or Convent, 
which is quite close to the hacienda. This building 
received its name from the fact that it was supposed 
to have been a convent occupied by the Maya maidens, 
who, like the vestal virgins, served the gods and were 
sworn to chastity for life. There is, however, no proof 
forthcoming that it was specially used for this purpose. 
It consists of a solid block of masonry apparently without 
any chambers in its interior, upon one side of which 
is built a wing containing nine chambers with arched 
Maya roofs. The great solid structure adjoining the wing 
was apparently constructed only to support two ranges of 
buildings. The first is approached by a stairway passing 
up the solid central block 56ft. wide and 32ft. high, leading 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 211 


to a range of rooms extending all round the structure, with 
a platform, 14ft. wide in front of them. From this platform 
ascends a second stairway of fifteen steps leading to a second 
range of rooms, now in a very bad state of preservation. 
The total height of the building was 65ft. Closely adjoining 
the wing is a small structure known as the Iglesia, or church, 
26ft. long, 14ft. broad, and 31ft. high. The outside of this 
is decorated with gigantic stone faces of the long-nosed god, 
one of which is very clearly seen in profile in the illustration. 
The nose curves up somewhat like an elephant’s trunk, and 
forms the chief ground for the somewhat fanciful theory that 
the ancestors of the Maya, who built the ruins of Copan and 
Yucatan, came originally from India, whence they carried 
with them the tradition of the elephant reproduced in their 
sculpture. The most interesting point about the Monjas 
perhaps is that a great excavation 30ft. deep, which has been 
made in one side of it by a former proprietor, for the purpose 
of taking out building stone, shows that the great central 
core is entirely solid, and, furthermore, that it has on two 
occasions been added to, the original core having supported 
quite a small, unpretentious temple, the second an extension 
of this, while the last consisted of the addition of the great 
stairway, the upper range, and the lower range containing 
nine rooms. 

The Monjas was probably constructed during the great 
period of the New Empire, i.e. between 1000 and 1200 A.D., 
and it clearly indicates how rapid must have been the 
growth of the city when within a couple of centuries a 
simple temple underwent such tremendous extension and 
elaborate sculptural decoration. Close to the Monjas is 
seen the building known as the Akatzib, or “‘ Writing in the 
Dark.” It faces east, and measures r4oft. by 48ft. The 
facade is quite plain, and in the centre of the building, which 
contains in all eighteen rooms, is a solid mass of masonry, to 
the platform, upon the top of which originally led a great 
stone stairway, now in ruins. From various indications 
it would appear that this building was unfinished, and that 


212 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


it was contemplated to build a second range of buildings 
upon the top of the great central solid core, an enterprise 
probably stopped by the Toltec conquest of the city. The 
name “‘ Writing in the Dark ”’ is derived from the presence 
of some hieroglyphic inscriptions in the southern room, none 
of which, unfortunately, give the date of the erection of the 
building ; they are difficult to read, as the room is almost 
in darkness. 

Proceeding northward from the Monjas, at a distance of 
40oft. stands the building known as the Caracol, from the 
spiral stairway in its interior, the only structure of this kind 
found throughout the Maya area, with the single exception 
of one at Mayapan, now a mere heap of ruins. It is circular 
in form, and stands upon the upper of two terraces. The 
lower terrace measures 223ft. by 150ft. Its summit is 
approached by a broad flight of stone steps, on each side of 
which, forming a balustrade, is a gigantic stone serpent, 
their heads resting upon the ground. The upper terrace 
measures 8oft. by 55ft., and its summit is reached by another 
flight of sixteen stone steps. Upon the summit of this 
terrace stands the Caracol, a circular building 22ft. in 
diameter. One side and a great part of the roof have fallen 
in. The roof must originally have sloped inwards almost 
to an apex. At each of the cardinal points is a small door 
opening into a circular passage 5ft. in diameter, the inner 
wall of which is pierced by four more doors, placed at 
intermediate points and opening into a second circular 
passage 4ft. in diameter. The centre of the building is 
occupied by a solid core of masonry. The whole structure 
is in such a tottering state that it is very dangerous to ex- 
plore it, as the least movement brings down loose stones, 
and very little would be required to bring the whole 
structure down on the head of the explorer. 

One hundred and fifty yards north-west from the Caracol 
stands the building known as the Chichanchob, or Red 
House, one of the most compact and best-preserved buildings 
amongst the ruins. It stands on a terrace measuring 





CHICHANCHOB, OR RED HOUSE, CHICHEN ITZA. 


ebees © 





CHICHANCHOB, OR RED HOUSE, CHICHEN ITZA. 


[p. 212 


* 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 213 


62ft. by 55ft., faced with cut stone, the rounded angles 
being formed by much larger stones. It is approached by 
a stairway 20ft. wide. The building itself measures 43ft. 
by 23ft., and possesses three doorways opening into a 
passage or corridor which runs the whole length of the 
building. Behind this are three small chambers, each with 
a door of its own opening into the front corridor. Ex- 
tending along the whole of the upper part of the back wall 
of the corridor is a band of hieroglyphics, all in a very bad 
state of preservation, but not, so far as may be judged by 
those which can still be deciphered, dealing with time counts. 

Not far from the Red House stands one of the most interest- 
ing buildings at the ruins, known as the High Priests’ Grave. 
It consists of a stone-faced pyramid approached by a 
stairway, on each side of which were the extended bodies of 
gigantic stone serpents, forming a balustrade, their heads, 
with open jaws and extended tongues, resting upon the 
ground, their tails containing the Crotalus rattle held up- 
right. The illustration showing an Indian standing beside 
one of the heads gives a good idea of their size. On the 
summit of the pyramid stands the ruins of a small stone 
temple supported on square stone columns. Upon one of 
these columns is an extremely interesting inscription reading 
2 Ahau 18 Xul, and just beneath this Tun1z1,2 Ahau. This 
means that the contemporaneous date of the temple fell 
upon a day 2 Ahau, the 19th day of the month Xul in the 
calendar round, and that in the Initial Series count this fell 
upon a Tun 11 ending in 2 Ahau. Now the only Initial 
Series date which would fit in with these data is I1.19.11.0.0, 
2 Ahau 18 Xul, which occurs in the year 1350 A.D. The 
date of the High Priest’s Grave consequently is 1350 A.D. 
A short time ago excavations were made in the stone floor 
of the temple at the summit of the pyramid, as it sounded 
hollow beneath. On removing the large slabs, a circular 
opening was disclosed leading into a stone-lined chamber, 
which contained a human skeleton with a number of orna- 
ments and some pieces of pottery. On removing the slabs 


214 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


from the floor of this chamber a second one was disclosed 
beneath it, in which were also found human bones, accom- 
panied by some very beautifully carved ornaments (beads, 
earrings, gorgets, etc.) of polished green jade. Beneath the 
second chamber a third one was discovered, also containing 
human bones, together with three large pearls, contained in 
a small saucer, which had unfortunately lost all their lustre 
after nearly five centuries of burial in this damp vault. The 
bones were in such a poor state of preservation that they 
crumbled away on being touched, and it was found im- 
possible to preserve them. A tradition existed that this 
mound was the burial-place of the High Priests of Chichen, 
and that from the lower chamber an underground passage 
passed to the Cenote of Sacrifice. No trace could be found 
of the passage, but it may exist, as working in the confined 
space and impure air of this lowest chamber—especially 
excavating, which throws up clouds of impalpable dust—is 
extremely difficult. I am strongly of opinion that the 
pyramid was the burial-place, not of the priests, but of the 
reigning Toltec family of Chichen at the time of its erection, 
and what leads me to this conclusion is that amongst the 
débris from the three chambers, which the excavator had 
left on the floor of the temple as worthless, I discovered the 
petrous portion of the temporal bone (the most indestructible 
part of the whole skull) of a child of about five years of age. 
Now if this had been the mausoleum of the high priests, 
no child would certainly have been buried there, but if it 
had been the royal mausoleum, probably all members of the 
royal family would have been interred within it. 

Passing to the north of the Castillo we come to the Ball 
Court. This consists of two parallel walls each 274ft. long, 
30ft. thick, and 120 ft. apart, faced throughout on their 
inner sides with neatly-cut square blocks of stone. To the 
north of the Ball Court, and facing the space between the 
two walls, is a small building standing on a terrace and 
approached by a flight of steps. It is 39ft. long, and contains 
but a single chamber. The front is supported by two 





SERPENT COLUMNS BY THE SIDE OF THE RUINED STAIRWAY LEADING 
UP THE PYRAMID OF THE HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE, CHICHEN ITZA. 


(e213 





CHICHEN ITZA : HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE, A ROYAL 
MAUSOLEUM. DATED COLUMN SHOWING IN- 
SCRIPTION COMMENCING 2 AHAU 18 XUL. 


[p. 213 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 215 


elaborately sculptured columns, while the back wall is 
covered from floor to arch with sculptured figures in low 
relief, now much defaced. At the opposite end of the 
court stands another building, facing the space between the 
walls. This is 81ft. long, and contains a single room. It 
- was supported on a series of elaborately sculptured square 
columns, now in ruins. In the centre of each wall, 2oft. 
from the ground, and exactly facing each other, was a great 
stone ring 4ft. in diameter and I3ins. thick, the diameter 
of the hole being 1gin. Round the borders of each are 
sculptured intertwined serpents. These courts were un- 
doubtedly made for playing the Mexican game of thlachtl, 
which was unknown to the Maya till introduced about 1200 
A.D. by the Toltec conquerors, for ball courts are found only 
at the two cities where Mexican influence was strongest, 
namely Chichen and Uxmal. The acoustic properties of 
the Ball Court are very remarkable, though whether they 
were intentional on the part of the builders it is impossible 
now to say. The lowest tones of a speaking voice in the 
North Temple can be heard quite plainly in the South 
Temple, though nearly an eighth of a mile separates them, 
and it is perfectly delightful, especially on a fine, calm, moon- 
light night, to sit in the South Temple and listen to the 
sweet voice of one of the native Maya girls singing a native 
song, as it almost appears as if she were standing at one’s 
elbow to sing. 


Herrera the historian, in describing Mexican games, 
gives the following vivid account of the ball game, or, as 
he calls it, tennis: 

“The King took much delight in seeing sport at Ball, 
which the Spaniards have since prohibited because of the 
mischief which often happened at it; and was by them 
called Tlachil, being like our Tennis. The Ball was made 
of the gum of a Tree that grows in hot countries, which, 
having holes made in it, distils great white drops, that 
soon harden, and being worked and moulded together, 


216 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


turn as black as pitch. The balls made thereof, though 
hard and heavy to the hand, did bound and fly as well as 
our Footballs, there being no need to blow them; nor 
did they use chaces, but vy’d to drive the adverse Party 
that is to hit the wall, the others were to make good, or 
strike it over. They struck it with any part of their 
body, as it happened, or they could most conveniently ; 
and sometimes he lost that touched it with any other 
Part but his Hip, which was looked upon among them 
as the greatest dexterity ; and to this effect, that the 
ball might rebound the better, they fastened a piece of 
stiff leather to their hips. They might strike it every 
time it rebounded, which it would do several times one 
after another, in so much that it looked as if it had been 
alive. They played in parties, so many on a side, for a 
load of mantles or what the gamesters could afford, at 
so many scores. They also played for gold and leather 
work, and sometimes played themselves away as has been 
said before. The place where they played was a ground 
room, long, narrow and high, but wider above them, 
below and higher on the sides than at the ends, and they 
kept it very well plastered, and smooth, both the walls 
and the floor on the side walls they fixed certain stones, 
like those of a mill with a hole quite through the middle, 
just as big as the ball, and he that could strike it through 
_ there won the game, and in token of its being an extra- 
ordinary success, which rarely happened, he had a right 
to the cloaks of all the lookers on, by the ancient custom 
and law amongst gamesters, and it was very pleasant to 
see, that as soon as ever the ball was in the hole the 
standers by took to their heels, running away with all 
their might to save their cloaks, laughing and rejoicing, 
others scouring after them to secure their cloaks for the 
winner, who was obliged to offer some sacrifice to the 
idol of the Tennis Court, and the stone through whose 
hole the ball had passed. Every Tennis Court was a 
temple having two idols, the one of gaming and the other 


a a oe 





SERPENT COLUMN ON SUMMIT OF HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE. 


[p. 213 





MAYA INDIAN IN RUINED SANCTUARY OF HIGH PRIEST’S GRAVE. 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 217 


of the ball. On a lucky day, at midnight they performed 
ceremonies and enchantments on the lower walls and on 
the midst of the floor, singing certain songs or ballads ; 
after which a Priest of the Great Temple went with some 
of their religious men to bless it, he uttered some words, 
threw the ball about the tennis court four times, and 
then it was consecrated, and might be played in, but not 
before. The owner of the Tennis Court, who was always 
a Lord, never played without making some offering and 
performing certain ceremonies to the idol of gaming, 
which shows how superstitious they were, since they had 
such regard to their idols even in their diversions. Monte- 
zuma carry’d the Spaniards to this sport and was well 
pleased to see them play at it, as also at cards and dice.” 


This description by Herrera of the game of tennis as 
played at the court of Montezuma can leave no room for 
doubt that the game was introduced by the Toltec con- 
querors from Mexico, as the courts, the rings, and the 
temples of sacrifice, with a few minor variations, are exactly 
as he described them. In clearing out the Ball Court 
enormous quantities of fragments of large clay incense 
burners, with the figure of a god in high relief done in 
appliqué on their outer surface, were found. These were 
buried amongst the dust, vegetal mould, and débris of 
falling walls, and had evidently been placed there since 
the abandonment of the Ball Court, probably in early 
Spanish times, by a few poor remnants of the Maya, who, 
as we have seen at Chacmool, still carried on the worship 
of their ancient gods in forests, ruins, and secret places 
notwithstanding the cruel persecution of the Spaniards, 
and especially of the priests. 

At the southern end of the east wall of the Ball Court 
stands the temple known as the Casa del Tigres, or Temple 
of the Jaguars. The lower story consists of a single room 
with vaulted roof, supported in front by two elaborately 
sculptured columns. The back wall is covered by very 


218 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


elaborate sculpture in low relief, showing a procession of 
Toltec warriors painted in red, green, and yellow, every 
detail of their plumed spears, shields, and other arms, their 
elaborate headdresses, their ornamental sandals, and even 
their crests or coats of arms which are placed by the side 
of each, is brought out with the utmost fidelity, and in the 
absence of any other evidence this painted, sculptured wall 
would prove conclusively that Chichen was at one time 
under Mexican dominion. Unfortunately, a great number 
of the stones from this magnificent painted sculpture have 
fallen, and we hoped to be able to find them all amongst 
the piles of débris which litter the floor of the chamber. 
This hope, however, we were compelled to abandon on 
finding several of them built into the wall of the church at 
Pisté, an Indian village a couple of miles distant from 
Chichen. The upper story of this temple is decorated by 
a most elaborate cornice, showing a procession of jaguars 
following each other all round the temple. The position of 
the animals—head forward and front paw upraised as they 
creep along—is most realistic. The front of this upper 
story is supported by two immense serpent columns, one 
of which is shown, with an Indian standing beside it. These 
serpents represent Quetzalcoatl, the hero god of the Maya, 
whose name signifies the “ Feathered Serpent,’ and on both 
the head and the square column which represents the body 
of the serpent conventionalised feathers can clearly be seen. 
The single room of this upper story is covered with stucco, 
upon which are painted in green, yellow, red, blue, and 
brown, in a highly realistic manner, scenes from the domestic 
and religious life of the inhabitants, warriors with shield 
and spear, dancing men, women about their domestic 
occupations, dug-out canoes on lake or sea, musicians, 
priests offering sacrifices, houses, figures of gods, and 
religious ceremonies. 

One hundred and twenty yards to the south of the temple 
of the Tigers stands the Castillo. The pyramid upon which 
it is erected measures at the base 197/ft. by 202ft., and stands 





THE BALL COURT, CHICHEN ITZA. 
[p. 214 





CHICHEN ITZA, CASA DEL TIGRE, 
OR TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS. [p. 217 


> 


“? 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 219 


75ft. high. It is approached by four stairways, the one on 
the north is 44ft. wide, and those on the other sides 37ft. wide. 
The northern stairway was evidently the main approach to 
the temple, as on each side of it are two great serpent balus- 
trades whose heads rest upon the ground. Both stairway 
and balustrades are now in ruins. The stairway on the 
west side has been restored, and one can reach the temple 
on top by means of it, though as the steps are very narrow 
and high the ascent is not easy, and numerous accidents 
have happened, especially to half-intoxicated Indians who 
have rashly undertaken the ascent without assistance. 
The platform at the summit of the mound measures 64ft. 
by 61ft., and the temple which stands upon it 4oft. by 43ft. 
The temple possesses four doors facing the four cardinal 
points, each with a lintel of carved sapote wood, now a good 
deal weathered after their 500 years’ exposure to the weather, 
and jambs of stone upon which are sculptured in low relief 
the figures of warriors with plumed headdresses, ear-plugs, 
and nose-ornaments. The northern doorway is by far the 
most important, as from it no doubt started the processions 
of priests accompanying the victims to the Cenote of Sacri- 
fice. It is 20ft. wide, and divided into three by two elabor- 
ately sculptured columns 8ft. 8in. high. It leads into a 
corridor 4oft. long and 17ft. high, in the rear wall of which 
is a door giving access to what is undoubtedly the most 
remarkable room throughout the whole ruins. It measures 
roft. 8in. by 12ft. gin., and is 17ft. high. Within it are two 
elaborately carved square stone columns oft. gin. high and 
22in. in diameter, and they support great sapote beams 
also very elaborately carved. Unfortunately, a great part 
of the surface of these beams has crumbled away from dry 
rot, and the best preserved piece of carving has been attacked 
by some vandal with an axe, perhaps a couple of feet of it 
removed, but a much greater area, of course, completely 
destroyed. One can only hope that there is in the future 
a special hell reserved for the type of person who will do 
this wanton and irreparable damage, and, above all, for 


220 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


those who are unable to leave a ruin or a monument without 
recording, as conspicuously and in as prominent a place as 
possible, their name and the date of their visit. From the 
top of this temple a magnificent view is obtained of all the 
surrounding country. Far as the eye can reach in every 
direction nothing is visible but an endless sea of virgin bush, 
flat as a table, and silent as the grave. To the east of 
the Castillo is found the curious structure known as the 
Market-place, or ‘‘ The Group of a Thousand Columns.” 
It consists of groups of three, four, or five columns standing 
on long, elevated terraces. Each column is composed of 
round, flat stone discs, and as their number is approximately 
a thousand they have been called “‘ The Group of a Thousand 
Columns.’ Most of them have fallen, and round all of them 
quantities of débris have collected, in some cases covering 
them to a height of 5ft. or 6ft. The group encloses on three 
sides a quadrangular space of considerable size. It is broken 
at intervals by temples and pyramids, and within the 
enclosed space are also a few small temples. There can be 
but little doubt that these columns formed an arcade 
surrounding a central market-place, and that at one time 
they supported a roof, possibly of cement, but more probably 
of palm leaf, carried on sapodilla beams. The group of 
columns, with their subsidiary temples, the Castillo, the Ball 
Court, the Temple of the Tigers, and numerous other smaller 
temples and pyramids, all stand upon one vast low terrace, 
which was at one time covered with stucco. The whole 
group, viewed from the summit, must in the days when 
the city flourished have presented a perfectly magnificent 
spectacle. 





CHICHEN ITZA., 
Castillo from the West. 
[p. 219 





CHICHEN ITZA. . INSCRIPTION ON INITIAL SERIES LINTEL. 


(I) UNDER SURFACE OF LINTEL. (2) FRONT OF LINTEL. 
[p. 226 





CHAPTER XIV 


The Cenote of Sacrifice—A Weird Pool—The Most Sacred Spot in Yucatan 
—Sacrifice to the Rain God of Young Girls—Wonderful Treasure 
Recovered from the Cenote, with Skeletons of Girls—Objects Found— 
Wide Distribution Geographically of Art Treasures—Sacrificial 
“ Killing’ of Objects before Throwing in the Cenote—First Historical 
Account of the Ruins—Montejo’s Ill-fated Occupation of Chichen 
Itza—The Spaniards Escape by a Ruse—The Temple of the Initial 
Series—The Chacmool Temple—The Temple of the Atlantean Figures 
—The Temple of Two Lintels and its Date—The Temple of the Owl 
and its Date—Dated Buildings Found Covering the Three Periods 
of the City. 


To the north of the Castillo lies the Cenote of Sacrifice, one 
of the most interesting sights at the ruins. It is a great 
circular well nearly 300ft. in diameter, with perpendicular 
sides descending 7oft. to the surface of the water, which is 
7oft. deep. The bottom is covered by a layer of thick 
brown mud 3o0ft. deep. It is a gloomy, repellant and 
mournful place, surrounded by thick bush, where a weird 
silence always exists, unbroken by the cry of an animal or 
the song of a bird. The surface of the water is of a dark 
greenish colour, without a ripple even in the highest wind. 
A stone dropped in produces a dull booming reverberation 
around the whole great cavity. It is from this cenote that 
the city took its name Chichen Itza, i.e. Chi, mouth, Chen, well, 
Itza, of the Itzas, the branch of the Maya who first occupied 
the site. From the Toltec conquest at the end of the 
twelfth century it was regarded as the most sacred spot in 
Yucatan, and hither came devotees from all over the Maya 
provinces to sacrifice to the god of rain. At ordinary times 
the sacrifices consisted of the most valuable and ‘beautiful 
products of the land—jade, turquoise, and gold jewels, 
stone and wood carvings, weapons of flint and obsidian, 
beautifully decorated pottery, gold vessels and gold inlaid 


221 


222 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


ornaments, and pieces of incense made from the gum of the 
white acacia of all sizes and shapes. During times of stress 
and especially during droughts, which must have been 
particularly dreaded by the inhabitants of this arid land, 
the most beautiful of their maidens were sacrificed to the 
god by being thrown into the cenote from the temple on 
its margin, the remains of which still exist. These sacrifices, 
till a few years ago, were regarded as merely traditionary ; 
then systematic dredging of the mud at the bottom of the 
cenote was undertaken, with the most astonishing results. 
The top layers of mud when brought up by the dredges 
yielded absolutely nothing, and operations were about to be 
abandoned, as it was supposed that tradition was, as usual, 
lying, when a few light-weight Maya artifacts appeared 
mixed with the mud. The deeper the dredges went the 
more things were brought to light, amongst them some of 
the most wonderful products of Maya art, including gold 
vases, cups, and bowls of all sizes, weapons, implements 
and ornaments of gold, jade, and obsidian, many thousands 
of pieces of incense, some contained in the vessels into which 
they had been poured while liquid, others spherical lumps, 
exquisitely carved round shields, and throwing sticks of 
hardwood, covered with a thin layer of gold following the 
contour of the carving, carved jade plaques, and, perhaps 
most interesting of all, great numbers of the skeletons of 
young girls, in a wonderful state of preservation, and 
coloured a dark brownish yellow by the mud in which they 
had been buried for so many centuries. Thus, then, the 
tradition handed down by Landa, Bishop of Yucatan, soon 
after the conquest, in his writings on the Indians and their 
customs, proved true in every particular. The reason why 
no objects were found in the upper layers of mud was 
probably that these had accumulated during the 400 years 
which had elapsed since the conquest of Yucatan, when, of 
course, no sacrifices were made in the cenote. From the 
Castillo—undoubtedly the principal temple during the 
Toltec occupation—to the cenote stretches a straight, broad, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 223 


elevated road, along which the girl victims marched to the 
sacrifice. They were accompanied by many priests in 
procession, and by bands of players on musical instruments, 
while the people in their thousands lined the sides of this 
via dolorosa and the edge of the cenote itself. The victims, 
who were probably partially drugged, seem to have gone 
to their fate, not only without fear, but with actual Joy, as 
they believed that they would within a few moments enter 
their heaven, a joyous, fertile land ruled over by the bene- 
ficent rain god, where sickness, sorrow, and death were 
unknown. If, as occasionally happened, one of the victims 
survived till midday at the bottom of the cenote, either by 
swimming or clinging to the side, she was rescued, being 
regarded as a messenger sent back with a communication 
from the god as to the kind of sacrifices necessary to procure 
the much-desired rain. One of our principal amusements 
while at Chichen was picking up pieces of jade from the 
margins of the cenote, 

When the dredges came up full of mud from the bottom 
this was dumped on the ground and felt over by hand, by 
Indians, under very close supervision. Notwithstanding 
these precautions, however, a considerable number of gold 
ornaments, bells, beads, etc., and some beautifully carved 
jade objects, were stolen. Most unfortunately, nearly all 
the objects offered as sacrifices to the rain god were “ killed ”’ 
before being thrown into the cenote ; that is, the jades were 
smashed, often into tiny pieces, the flints and obsidians were 
broken, the gold objects were hammered together into 
compact masses, and the lumps of incense were partially 
consumed, frequently with a jade plaque or a few beads 
on top of them, which were necessarily calcined and 
blackened. 

Thus it happened that thousands of small pieces of jade 
and turquoise were left amidst the mud on the margins of 
the cenote, and after every heavy fall of rain these are 
washed out and may be picked up. I found several beads 
of beautifully polished translucent green jade, one piece with 


224 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


half a Maya glyph of the day Ahau inscribed upon 
it, and hundreds of fragments of blackened and calcined 
jade which had been burnt in the incense before being 
thrown in. Some of the objects sacrificed are evidently 
heirlooms, which had been handed down in the great 
Maya families for centuries. This applies particularly to 
the jade plaques, some of which can, on stylistic grounds, 
be dated back to the Old Empire, and were at least 600 
and perhaps 1,000 years old when they were thrown in. 

Turquoise from as far north as the Pueblo region is found 
side by side with gold ornaments from as far south as 
Nicaragua. The cenote must, therefore, have been regarded 
with extraordinary veneration both by the Maya and their 
conquerors, while either the rain god cult extended from 
the Pueblo region to Nicaragua, or, what is more probable, 
the Maya carried on commerce with the people of both these 
regions, and sacrificed the more precious of the objects 
obtained from them in the cenote, 


The first historical mention of the ruins of Chichen Itza 
was when, in 1528, Francisco Montejo penetrated them 
with his soldiers from the east coast, starting from 
opposite the Island of Cozumel, shortly after he had been 
appointed Adelantado, or Governor of Yucatan. Montejo 
decided to settle at Chichen Itza, as he considered that the 
strength of the great buildings as fortresses would enable 
him to defend them against any attack launched by the 
Indians. Here he made the fatal mistake of dividing his 
forces, sending one section off under Davila to Chetumal, 
where the existence of gold had been reported. Though the 
ruins were probably at this time abandoned, for since the 
middle of the previous century the Maya had degenerated 
greatly in every way owing to the constant internecine 
wars between the small rulers of the peninsula, yet never- 
theless there must have been a dense population around 
Chichen Itza, for we are told that, in making the distribution 
allowed by the Royal Charter, not less than 2,000 fell to any 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 225 


of the conquistadores. The Indians, enraged by the brutal 
treatment of the Spaniards and the constant drain on their 
stocks of provisions, at no time much more than sufficient 
to support themselves, determined to get rid of their oppres- 
sors at any cost. With this end in view they first of all 
cut off the supply of provisions completely, and when the 
Spaniards sent out foraging parties, these were set upon and 
exterminated. 

Immense numbers of Indians now began to collect round 
the Spanish fortification, and the Spaniards, seeing that 
they must either fight or die of starvation, sallied forth and 
fought the most sanguinary battle ever recorded in Yucatan 
between the Indians and their conquerors. The Spaniards 
were victorious, but at a terrible cost, for 150 of their number 
were killed, and hardly one of the survivors was without 
a wound. 

Surrounded by Indians, unable to obtain food, the 
situation was obviously untenable, so they had resort to a 
ruse to make good their escape. One dark night, after 
the Indians had been well tired out by constant sallies during 
the day, and were off their guard, the Spaniards tied a dog 
to the clapper of a bell, and placed some food beside him just 
out of his reach. The dog, endeavouring to follow them, 
and later to get at the food, kept the bell constantly going, 
while the Indians, imagining the Spaniards were sounding 
an alarm, waited daybreak before attacking them 
again. 

In the meantime the Spaniards had marched quietly out 
and made their way towards Silan, where the cacique was 
friendly towards them, and eventually assisted them in 
making their way to the coast. From that date to the 
middle of the eighteenth century no further mention is 
made of Chichen Itza, but the probabilities are that the 
Indians were left pretty much to themselves, as the accu- 
mulation of fragments of incense burners in the Ball Court, 
sure sign of a return to idolatry and an absence of priestly 


influence, would tend to show. 
PL 


226 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


We found innumerable smaller temples and other struc- 
tures at Chichen Itza, many of which possessed some point 
of special interest, though compared with the larger buildings 
they were in themselves insignificant. 

Of these the most important was the Temple of the 
Initial Series. Situated a considerable distance to the south 
of the hacienda, this small ruined temple stands on a low 
pyramid, and forming one of its entrances are two Atlantean 
figures supporting a stone lintel, upon the front of which 
is sculptured in low relief the Initial Series 10.2.9.1.9. 
9 Muluc 7 Zac, falling within the year 619 A.D. On the under 
surface of the lintel is sculptured a Tun 10 ending on a day 
2 Ahau, which brings the contemporaneous date of this 
lintel to 10.2.10.0.0. 2 Ahau 13 Chen, falling within the year 
620 A.D. This, however, it must be understood, is the con- 
temporaneous date of the lintel only ; the temple itself belongs 
to a much later period, for as the Atlantean figures—a purely 
Mexican innovation—show, it was not built till after the 
Toltec invasion about 1200 A.D. It follows, therefore, that 
the lintel must have been taken from an old Maya temple 
and reused in its present situation by the conquerors, with- 
out altering its original date. Had it not been supported 
on Atlantean columns, this lintel would undoubtedly have 
been regarded as dating the temple of which it forms 
part. 

The Initial Series is extremely interesting, partly because 
it is the earliest one of the only three known in Yucatan, 
and partly because it fixes, without a shadow of a doubt, the 
earliest Maya occupation of the city. 

Situated a short distance to the north-east of the Castillo 
is what is known as the Chacmool Temple. A few years ago, 
when the substructure upon which this temple stood was 
excavated, there was brought to light a gigantic human figure 
in areclining position, the arms pressed to the sides, legs drawn 
up, and head looking backward over the shoulder, precisely 
similar in every respect to the one found at Chacmool, 
already described. Since then numbers of these figures 





CHACMOOL’ STATUE, FROM ONE OF SMALLER TEMPLES, CHICHEN ITZA. 


[p. 226 





UXMAL : HOUSE OF THE ADIVINO. 


ip. 248 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 227 


have been discovered at the ruins, and there can be no doubt 
but that they were introduced by the Toltecs, and probably 
worshipped by them as gods. 

The temple of the Atlantean Figures is situated just north 
of the Market-Place. It is a square building standing on a 
high stone-faced pyramid, both now in a very ruined condi- 
tion. In the small back room as sanctuary of the temple are 
a number of Atlantean figures such as are found in great 
quantities all over the city. Here the use to which they were 
originally put is well shown, for four of them support a 
large rectangular slab of stone, evidently used as an altar, 
upon one side of the sanctuary, while on the opposite side 
a similar altar has fallen, leaving the Atlantean figures and 
top scattered on the floor. This temple is known locally as 
the Temple of the “Mesas or tables, from the resemblance 
of these altars to low stone tables. 

The Temple of the Two Lintels is interesting in that it 
contains one of the only four dates found at Chichen Itza. 
The inscription shown in the illustration reads 9 Eznab, a 
day, eleven, the month Yax, occurring in a Tun 13; which 
may be interpreted as the calendar round date g Eznab, 
Ir Yax, occurring in a Tun 13, and corresponding to the 
Initial Series date 13.7.12.16.18.9 Eznab 11 Yax, falling 
within the year I107 A.D., which may be regarded as 
the contemporaneous date of this little temple. The 
tun sign given in this inscription is a winged Cauac, the 
meaning of which we discovered from data collected 
on this trip, a discovery which has helped immensely 
in the decipherment of the glyphs throughout the whole 
peninsula. 

From a small structure situated quite close to the Temple 
of the Initial Series, and known as the Temple of the Owl 
because the head of that bird is sculptured upon it in 
several places, was taken a capstone, upon which was 
painted 1 Ahau ending a Tun 13, this would correspond with 
the Initial Series date 12.2.13.0.0. 1 Ahau, 18 Ceh, falling 
within the year I4II A.D. 


228 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


We had now found dated monuments corresponding to 
the three periods of occupancy of the city. The Initial 
Series date on the Temple of the Initial Series—620 Aa.D.— 
goes back to the first Maya settlement after the hegira 
from the Old Empire. The Temple of Two Lintels, 1107 
A.D., corresponds to the Great Period, between r1ooo and 
I200 A.D., when the League of Mayapan existed. 

The High Priest’s Grave, 1350 A.D., and the Temple of 
the Owl, I41I A.D., correspond to the latest or Toltec period 
of the city. 

A small temple situated close to the Temple of the Owl 
is of interest, as from the inner walls of two of the rooms 
project gigantic phalli, the only indication throughout the 
whole city that phallic worship was ever practised by the 
Maya. 

To archeologists used to exploring ancient Maya cities 
two facts stand out as remarkable at Chichen Itza—the 
absence of small burial-mounds and of potsherds. Usually 
Maya sites are covered with potsherds, and such small 
articles as clay beads and spindle whorls, arrow-heads, and 
pieces of obsidian knives, flint hammerstones and scrapers, 
and similar comparatively valueless indestructible objects. 

At Chichen Itza, however, nothing of this kind is found, 
and even potsherds are extremely rare. One reason possibly 
is that a very durable kind of cement used in the ruins was 
composed largely of broken-up potsherds, most of which 
may have been collected and used for this purpose. This 
would not, however, account for the complete absence of 
all small artifacts so common at most other Maya sites. 

The city was occupied for nearly 1,000 years, and at one 
time its population was probably in the neighbourhood of 
250,000, so that at a very moderate computation at least 
one million persons must have been buried in and around 
it, from the date of its foundation on to the Spanish con- 
quest, including kings, priests, and nobles, and yet, with 
the exception of the High Priest’s Grave and one other 
sepulchral temple, no burials have been found up to now. 





CHICHEN ITZA. 
Text from High Priest’s grave. Above 2 Ahau 18 Xul; 
below Tun 11, 2 Ahau. 


[p. 213 





CHICHEN ITZA. 
Temple of the two lintels. 


I. 9 Ezgnab, A CENA B ER 
3. -Eleven. 4. Month Yax. 
5. Occurring in Tun 13 
OV-Lt, 712.10, 18), 6. EZ0aD Tr Yax0l 1107 A.D: 


[p. 227 


“Z 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 229 


The small mounds in the neighbourhood of the city are not, 
as one might expect, sepulchral, but almost invariably 
formed substructures for small temples. What, then, did 
the inhabitants do with their dead ? 

All round the city are found quarries, mostly shallow 
excavations in the limestone, from which had been taken 
the vast quantities of stone required for the construction 
of the buildings. In many of these quarries great blocks 
of stone still remain, some of them partially squared, just 
as they had been left by the builders. 

It is difficult to form a true conception of the extent of 
the city. We found ruins three miles to the north of the 
cenote and a couple of miles to the south of old Chichen, 
while paved roadways branch out to ruins to the east of 
the city. All except the few central buildings are buried 
in dense bush, and till this is cleared and burnt it is impossible 
to say for how many miles the ruins extend in each direction. 

We had thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the ruins, our 
only regret being that we could not remain longer, but this 
was out of the question, and it will require years of syste- 
matic work in clearing and excavation to bring all its 
hidden secrets to light. 

We found garvapaias, or ticks, the most troublesome pest 
at Chichen, where they abound in every part of the bush, 
and vary in size from a large split pea to a small pin’s head. 
On returning from work in the ruins at dusk we always had 
a rub down with gasoline and afterwards a good bath with 
soap and water, thus ensuring a peaceful night. Indeed, if 
we got badly covered with ticks during the morning’s work 
we often had to resort to a midday rub down and bath as 
well. One horrible pest seems to be peculiar to this locality, 
as I have never seen it in any other part of Central America. 
This is a beetle about riin. in length, with a long proboscis, 
which it digs into one’s skin. It usually attacks early in 
the morning, and fortunately gives warning of its approach 
with a loud booming noise, but as it is extraordinarily 
quick one is not always able to avoid its attack, even when 


230 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


duly warned. The puncture inflicted does not itch or give 
any trouble for the first twenty-four hours, but after that 
for two or three days it swells to a painful lump, which 
itches intolerably, and may not completely disappear for 
several weeks, and may even suppurate. 





ees 


STONE ALTAR SUPPORTED ON ATLANTEAN 


COLUMNS, CHICHEN ITZA. 


pn 227 





irre 
~ g wk % SOE seaman teats le ies a = 


SIELE REPRESENTING TWO NATIVES CLAD IN LOIN 
CLOTHS, CARRYING THE CARCASS. OF A DEER: SLUNG 
ONSA POLE. 


lp. 227 





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CHAPTER XV 


We return to Dzitas—Unsuccessful Effort to Stop Réveillé by Inaian 
Performers—An Accommodating Judge—Similarity of the Yucate- 
cans to the Irish—Arrival at Ticul—An Uncomfortable Night— 
The Cave of Loltun—Petroglyphs—Water Receptacles—The Only 
Date found in the Cave—Tradition Amongst the Indians in Con- 
nection with the Cave—The Ranch of Tabi—Hospitably Enter- 
tained—A Luxurious Ranch—-An Equine Battle Royal—A Curious 
Stele showing traces of Spanish Influence—The Inscription Un- 
decipherable—A Bad Road—Santa Ana—Great Pyramid at: 
Kabah—Great Numbers of Ruined Buildings throughout Yucatan 
—Other Buildings at Kabah—Glyphs which we Could Not Read 
—A Triumphal Arch—A Stone-faced Terrace; Buildings on It— 
Removal of Sapodilla Beams Leads to the Fall of the Buildings— 
Removal of Sculptured Lintel to New York and Its Destruction— 
Sculptured Door Jambs—Disappointed In Not Finding a Date in 
the City—Pleasant City to Visit—Scarcity of Water—Source of 
Water Supply of Ancient Inhabitants. 


On Saturday, March 17th, we left Chichen early in the 
morning on horseback, sending our luggage on with Muddy 
by volan for Dzitas. It came on to pour with rain when 
we had gone about eight miles, and for the last half of the 
journey never let up, so that we arrived like drowned rats. 
We were given the Cabildo, or combined Court House, 
Police Station, and Lock-Up, to sleep in ; a fine, large, airy 
clean, whitewashed room, with an earth floor, where we 
were very glad to get into dry clothes and hang up our 
hammocks. Tea and food were our first thought after 
changing—both difficult to obtain, as all the shops close 
every day at noon by order of the Municipality. The tea 
we managed to obtain by giving a Turk two dollars gold to 
open his store and sell us }lb., but as we heard he was fined 
ten dollars for doing so it cannot have been a very profitable 


231 


232 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


transaction. Tortillas, sponge cakes, eggs, and Jonganis, 
or native sausage, Muddy managed to procure by a house- 
to-house tour, so we did not do so badly. A bugle and 
drum reposed in the corner of the Cabildo, and, knowing by 
bitter experience the horrible custom in all Yucatecan 
villages, where a few soldiers are stationed, of sounding 
révéille at cock crow every morning, and prolonging the 
agony for a quarter of an hour, we carefully wet the drum- 
heads and poured water into the bugle. To no purpose, 
however, as next morning before five we were awakened by 
the well-known racket right outside the door of the Cabildo. 
It was a trifle spluttering at first, and the bugler was using 
horrible language in Maya, while the drum was decidedly 
flat, but the volume of noise was unimpaired, and I think 
we got an extra long performance. 

Next morning the stores were open, and we bought some 
provisions from a tiny shop next the Cabildo, outside which 
were collected several litigants waiting till we had finished 
early tea for the Court to open. At breakfast-time the 
Judge, who kept the little store where we bought our 
provisions, very courteously adjourned Court till we had 
finished, when we discovered it was time for us to get on to 
the railway-station. 

The more one sees of Yucatan, the more it reminds one 
of Ireland ; the same soft, fragrant, indescribable atmo- 
sphere found nowhere else in the world, the same straggling 
villages with their whitewashed thatched cabins, with the 
same pig, the mainstay of the family, running in and out 
at will, and the same kitchen midden under the window ; 
the same happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted, hospitable, super- 
stitious, irresponsible people, equally ready for a row or a 
spree, hating the one the Mexican, the other the Sassenach 
with a bitter, hereditary racial hatred. 

From Dzitas we took train to Ticul, another large village, 
whose inhabitants are nearly all Indians and Mestizos. The 
national flag was flying half mast high on our arrival, and 
on enquiring the reason we were informed that it was in 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 233 


mourning for the anniversary of General Alvorado’s en- 
trance to Yucatan four years previously, when the Yucatecans 
were, after a bitter lesson, subjected to the Carranza Govern- 
ment. Surely nowhere else but in the Emerald Isle could 
the conqueror be thus insulted publicly without after- 
thoughts of reprisals! But Mexico now justly regards 
Yucatan as the goose which lays the golden eggs, whose 
laying abilities are not to be lightly interfered with. 

We slept that night at Ticul, where, as there is nothing 
approaching an hotel, we were glad to be able to hire ham- 
mocks in the house of a merchant from whom we had hired 
a ‘‘ Fotingo’”’ to take us to the ranch of Tabi next day. 
Our host was an enormously stout man, and at the usual 
Yacatecan supper of chicken, beans, eggs, tomatoes, chili, 
and tortillas entertained as with the half-dozen sentences 
in English of which he was the master. He was like all 
Yucatecans, extremely anxious to learn the language, but 
as an opportunity of conversing with a citizen of the U.S.A. 
only occurred about once a year, while 1 was probably the 
first Englishman he had encountered, his progress was 
naturally slow. The whole family sat around at the lesson, 
and gave us some useful hints in Maya pronunciation in 
return. 

They were all very stout, and soon after we had retired 
to our hammocks all commenced to snore in different keys; 
though doubtless, being used to each other’s little idio- 
syncrasies, none of them apparently kept the others awake. 
For me, however, the noise rendered sleep impossible, and 
though I had no compunction in waking our host, I hesitated 
to enter the sefiorita’s room for that purpose, lest my motives 
be misunderstood, so retired with a small cot and rug to the 
patio, or yard, to keep the house dog company, though even 
his reception. was far from friendly. 

We made a very early start next morning with the 
“‘ Fotingo,”’ in which the driver engaged to take us as near 
as the auto could go to the mouth of the great cave of Loltun. 
From this point we would walk to the cave, while he 


OL 


234 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


went on to the ranch at Tabi, where we were to join him 
later. 

Arrived at the point, Morley, Held, myself, and Muddy 
started with a guide for the cave, which we were assured was 
but three short kilometres away. After walking over a 
rocky road for nearly an hour in the broiling sun we thought 
we must be approaching our destination, and, on asking 
the guide, were told: “ Pues, senvor, no es mas que una 
legua’’—‘ Well, sir, it’s not over a league! ”’ 

In another forty minutes, however, we reached the mouth 
of the cave, a comparatively small and not very impressive- 
looking hole in the ground. Entering, we found ourselves 
in a sloping passage, scrambling down which, we arrived at 
a ledge from which a ladder, constructed of two tree-trunks, 
having steppers tied on with strands of liana, led to the 
floor of the cave. .It proved to be a vast, rock-strewn 
chamber, with many stalactites hanging from the lofty roof, 
the floor covered by a layer of soft brown earth. From the 
chamber, at various levels, innumerable passages led away in 
all directions, some low, narrow tunnels only large enough to 
squeeze through on all fours, others vast galleries, lofty and 
spacious as the nave of a cathedral. 

We followed one of the largest, and shortly came to another 
great rock-strewn chamber, with an opening to the outer 
world through its roof, perhaps 4oft. overhead, partly 
obscured by an exquisite tracery of creeping vines covered 
with flowers and leaves. The name of the cave—“‘ Loltun,” 
or ‘‘ Flower Stone ’’—may have been derived from these, or 
possibly from the fancied resemblance of some of the 
stalactitic formations to flowers. 

We passed numerous petroglyphs, both on the walls of the 
cave and on the rock outcropping from the floor. They 
were, however, very roughly executed—mostly geometrical 
devices, as circles, lines, and squares, with a few crude 
human figures. At frequent intervals basins for the accumu- 
lation of the constantly dripping water have been cut in the 
rock formation, and these having in the course of centuries 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 235 


become encrusted with lime salts, now present the appear- 
ance of great smooth monolithic fonts, ever full of ice-cold 
water to refresh the weary traveller. 

The earth covering the floor of the cave, near the overhead 
openings, is full of relics of the ancients—pottery, beads, 
potsherds, fragments of idols, charcoal, pieces of bone, 
bone needles and borers, malacates or spindle whorles, 
broken grindstones, and a great variety of indestructible 
débris. It is evident that these rooms, being light and dry, 
were at one time occupied by the former inhabitants ; 
indeed, it is probable that those unfortunate Indians who 
fled from their Spanish conquerors took refuge in this vast 
catacomb, from which a whole army corps could never 
have dislodged them. 

Away from the skylights the cave is pitch dark, and the 
atmosphere chill, musty, and oppressive. The extent of the 
whole subterraneous system must be enormous, as on one 
occasion a party well equipped with torches, and leaving a 
thread track behind to guide their return, travelled for two 
days on one of the main galleries without finding an end to 
it. 

In a chamber under an opening into the cave about a mile 
from the one by which we first descended is the only date 
discovered up to the present, carved very plainly on the 
rock. This consists of a 3 Ahau, signifying that it was 
executed at the end of Katun 3 Ahau, which might corres- 
pond to either of the two dates 12.1.0.0.0. 3 Ahau, 18 
Kayab (that is, 1379 A.D.), or to 11.8.0.0.0. 3 Ahau, 18 Chen 
(that is, 1123 A.D.). / 

It is practically impossible to say which date should be 
accepted as contemporaneous, as no doubt the cave was 
well known to the natives centuries before the earlier and 
after the later. 

We did not explore any of the innumerable galleries very 
far, as, knowing well their vast extent, we were afraid of 
getting lost. Moreover, though the skylights are numerous, 
they are for the most part mere holes in the roof, with no 


236 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


means of access from below, those by which it is possible 
to leave or enter the cave being few, and situated miles 
apart. Indeed, wandering in these interminable pitch-dark 
passages and galleries one would be far more likely to fall 
into a pot-hole or crevasse than to stumble on to an exit 
leading to the open air. 

There is a tradition handed down amongst the modern 
Indians that during one of the innumerable internecine 
wars amongst the Maya which followed the breaking-up of 
the central authority in Mayapan, the inhabitants of a 
certain village were driven to take refuge in this cave by a 
band of their enemies, who pursued them even into this last 
refuge, and that of neither pursued nor pursuers was any 
trace ever again seen, not asingle survivor returning to tell the 
fate of the rest. Some believe that all fell over a precipice 
in one of the unexplored galleries; others that all lost 
their way and died of starvation; and others, again, that 
all were poisoned by irrespirable gasses. Whatever their 
fate, the possibility of encountering at any turn several 
hundred rag-clad skeletons, shrouded in the impalpable 
dust of centuries, does not detract from the eerie feeling 
one experiences in traversing these dark and silent 
galleries. 

On emerging from the cave, we made our way to the 
hacienda of Tabi, a magnificent stone palace with a broad 
corridor 300ft. long, from which opened huge, cool, spacious 
rooms. It was flanked by a fine church, while at the back 
were vast stone corrals full of cattle, horses, and mules. 
The village occupied by the labourers was close to the house, 
but here—as elsewhere in Yucatan—the houses were falling 
into ruins, and the peons had deserted the rancho for better- 
paid work, or to start small fincas, or farms, of their own. 
The sugar mills and distillery, amongst the finest in Yucatan, 
were closed—in fact, work on the hacienda was confined 
almost exclusively to stock-raising. 

We were entertained by the major-domo with the usual 
lavish hospitality of the country, and dined with him and 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 237 


several of his staff, who having a Chinese cook, and a free run 
on the resources of the vancho’s gardens, stockyards, and 
hen-houses, did themselves uncommonly well. We con- 
tributed as our quota to the feast a few small luxuries in 
tins and bottles, which even in Merida were exceedingly 
difficult to procure. 

Amongst the other luxuries of the vancho was an enormous 
stone tank, with several feet of water in it, fed by guttering 
from the roof, in which one could not only enjoy a bath, but 
a fair imitation of a swim, and where, if a warm bath were 
desired, it was only necessary to wait until late after- 
noon, when the sun had heated the water to about blood 
heat. 

Even at this paradise amongst vanchos, however, we were 
not to enjoy a peaceful night, for soon after we had retired 
to our hammocks pandemonium broke loose amongst the 
horses in the corral, and an equine battle royal raged, which 
must havelasted a coupleofhours. The squealing, neighing, 
and shrieking of the animals, punctuated by the drum-like 
thud of hoofs on ribs, the bellowing of the cattle in the 
neighbouring corrals, the shouting and swearing of the 
stockmen trying to quiet the disturbance, combined to 
produce a terrific din, while a great bunch of milling animals 
dimly visible by the light of flaring torches, made a scene 
difficult to describe, and impossible to sleep through. At 
last things quieted down gradually, but next morning the 
effects of the battle were plainly visible in the form of two 
dead stallions lying side by side in one of the corrals, the earth 
floor of which, torn up by their hoofs, resembled a ploughed 
field, their carcases were already being fought over by a 
pack of great mangy, half-savage dogs, and flocks of 
sopilotes, or black vultures, tearing the skin and flesh to 
get at the entrails. 

Near the gate of the great patio, or yard, which surrounds 
the hacienda, is a very remarkable stele representing two 
Indians clad only in loin cloths, carrying, slung on a pole, 
the carcase of a deer, above which, on a rounded arch of 


238 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


stone, is sculptured a row of hieroglyphics, now so weather- 
worn as to be completely indecipherable. This stele is 
quite unique in the nature of the event recorded, the free and 
unconventional treatment of the subject, and the fact that 
the figures are not merely executed in relief upon the face of 
the great flat stone, but perforations have been made in it 
following the main outlines. The whole, in fact, shows 
strong Spanish artistic influence, and it would almost seem 
as if it had been executed after the conquest by Indians, 
who, coming in contact with the Spaniards, had absorbed 
some of their notions of art. The hieroglyphics at the top 
probably described the nature of the event depicted below. 
Some Goth, as may be seen, has recently given the whole a 
coat of limewash in two colours. 

This stele, with several other inscribed stones about the 
hacienda, was taken from ruins in the vicinity, which have 
been completely torn down to build the house, church, 
labourers’ homes, and corrals, so that nothing remains now 
but mounds of débris. 

Early next morning we started in the “ Fotingo ”’ for the 
ruins of Kabah, over a road which had never before been 
negotiated by a motor-car, and which everyone at the 
vancho warned us was impassable. Our impedimenta were 
even more extensive than usual, as in addition to cots, 
bedding, food, cooking utensils, photographic apparatus, 
suit-cases, etc., which constituted our normal outfit, we had to 
carry a good supply of water in demijohns, as none was to 
be procured at Kabah. By dint of walking most of the way, 
removing the largest rocks from the road, and pushing the 
car up the worst rocky ridges, we managed to cover the five 
miles or so to the vancho of Santa Ana in about two hours. 
Here we stopped for a rest, and the major-domo had a large 
bag of oranges picked for us from a very prolific little 
orange-grove in the vancho. Like most of the other 
haciendas we had seen in Yucatan, this showed signs of 
having once been a fine, prosperous estate, now gradually 
undergoing a process of slow degeneration. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 239 


From Santa Ana to Kabah the going was better, and we 
passed innumerable ruins, plainly visible on each side of the 
road through the thin bush which surrounded them. These 
were mounds, stone-faced pyramids, and fallen temples, but 
all in a very dilapidated condition, nor did we anywhere 
come across a large aggregation of ruined buildings denoting 
a former city site. 

The ruins of Kabah are buried in a dense growth of low, 
thick bush, with a few narrow, indistinct paths, used by the 
Indians, passing through it here and there. The most 
conspicuous object is a great pyramid situated in the centre 
of the ruins, 60 yds. in diameter at the base, and 8oft. high. 
It had originally been faced with cut stone, and the summit 
reached by stone stairways like the Castillo at Chichen Itza 
and the House of the Dwarf at Uxmal. These had now, 
however, completely fallen away, leaving only a vast mound 
of ruins covered with bush, and showing traces of ruined 
buildings only at the summit. From the top a magnificent 
view was obtained over the whole surrounding country, 
bounded, except to the west, by ranges of low hills, 
and showing the grey bleached walls or ruins visible 
in all directions through the parched green of the low 
scrub. 

Wherever one goes in Yucatan ruins are found in extra- 
ordinary abundance ; indeed, one cannot help realising that 
the whole country in the days of its magnificence must 
have been literally so covered with cities, both large and 
small, that their suburbs almost joined each other, leaving 
hardly a square mile which did not contain a stone palace 
or temple, round which clustered the thatched huts of the 
workers. The whole country, as one of the conquistadores 
puts it, resembled a garden. 

A quarter of a mile to the east of this pyramid is a great 
stone-faced terrace approached by a flight of steps 2oft. high. 
Upon this terrace are the ruins of many buildings, one of 
which measured r07ft. by r106ft. at the base, and rose to 
three stories, each smaller than the one beneath it. The 


240 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


summit was approached by a broad stone stairway supported 
on the half of a Maya arch, springing from the ground, and 
leaning against the wall of the building. We used one of the 
small stone-faced rooms of the lower story as a store-room 
and the arched space beneath the stairway as a kitchen, for 
being open at both ends, there was always a good draught 
passing through to carry off the pungent wood smoke. 


On the opposite side of the platform stood a long building 
approached by a broad, steep flight of stone steps, and 
possessing a most elaborately decorated facade, the sculpture 
reaching from the platform to the roof of the building. This 
resembled very closely the facades of the Jglesta and part of 
the Monjas at Chichen Itza, and consisted of reproductions of 
the face of the long-nosed god in rows, one above the other. 
The nose resembles an elephant’s trunk, the teeth are square 
and jagged, and the pupils of the eyes are formed of round 
stone tenoned in, most of which have now fallen from the 
hollow eye-sockets. 


Two somewhat remarkable stone heads found among 
the ruins are seen resting in the lower cornice of this 
facade. 

The interior of the building contained a front and back 
row of apartments, the front measuring 27ft. by roft. 6in. ; 
the back 27ft. by 1oft. The inner room is on a higher level 
than the outer, and is approached by two stone steps. In 
front of this building is a square structure discovered by 
Stephens, upon some of the stones of which he describes 
hieroglyphics. This was almost completely covered by 
earth, and we had to dig the stones out very carefully one at 
a time. 

The only intelligible glyphs we found were an Imix G3) 
repeated several times, and an Ahau ; both, however, 
without numerical coefficients. It would appear that the 
inscription had gone all round the structure, and that the 
stones containing it had got out of their proper places. 

As it would have required much more time than we had at 





KABAH : THE DOOR ON THE RIGHT IS THE ENTRANCE TO OUR 
SITTING-ROOM. 


[p. 240 





KABAH : FACADE ORNAMENTED WITH FACES OF THE LONG NOSED GOD. 


Two of these are shown, the left eye of the face on the left side 
still retaining in situ the stone which served as the pupil. Beneath 
these are seen two stone heads dug from the ruins. 


[p. 240 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 241 


our disposal to excavate this building thoroughly, find all the 
stones, put them in their proper sequence, and decipher the 
inscription, we buried them again for future reference on our 
next visit to the ruins. 

Just to the south-west of the central pyramid stands a 
great solitary arch with a span of r4ft. It is placed upon a 
slight elevation, and, as it is quite unconnected with any other 
building, was no doubt intended as a triumphal arch to 
commemorate some victory. It is constructed on the 
cantilever principle, and the upper part has fallen, but it is 
nevertheless a very imposing structure, and the span is 
unusually large for an arch of this type. 

To the south-west of the central pyramid is a great stone- 
faced terrace 300yds. long by 30yds. wide, buried in the 
dense bush, upon which stand the ruins of two buildings. 
The first, 217ft. long, with seven openings in front, and what 
had at one time been a very elaborately sculptured facade, 
is now almost completely in ruins. 

The second building was 142ft. long, and consisted of two 
stories, the upper set back from the lower and approached by 
a great arched stone stairway. 

At the time of Stephen’s visit in 1841 the lintels of these 
doors, cut from sapodilla wood, were all 7 situ, and in fairly 
good preservation; now throughout the whole ruin we 
did not find a single wooden lintel ; all had been torn down, 
in some case bringing with them the buildings to which they 
belonged, and adding very materially to the rapidity with 
which this once great city has fallen into ruins. 

Stephens himself is not to be absolved of blame in the 
matter, as from the second of the buildings on this terrace 
he removed a beautiful carved sapodilla lintel in three pieces, 
the vast gap which has been left in the process still bearing 
mute and pathetic witness to this act of vandalism, now 
seventy-seven years old. The lintel, which was removed to 
New York, was unfortunately destoyed by fire, with a great 
part of the large collection made by Stephens, soon after its 
arrival in the U.S.A. 


242 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


Close to the great terrace Stevens found a comparatively 
small stone building with sculptured figures on the door- 
jambs, facing each other, representing small kneeling 
figures in front of large, elaborately clad warriors, beneath 
each of which was a row of hieroglyphics in excellent 
preservation. 

We looked forward to finding at least a period ending date 
amongst these, by which we might accurately date the city, 
and our disappointment was great at finding the building 
a mere heap of great stones, with the jambs probably buried 
beneath hundreds of tons of rubbish, and utterly beyond our 
power to disinter with the time and labour at our disposal. 

Kabah was probably a purely Maya city, as no Chacmools, 
serpent columns, Atlantean figures, or other indications of 
Toltec culture are to be found anywhere within it, whereas 
the Maya long-nosed god is very conspicuous on the facades 
of the temples. Stylistically it is extremely like the Monjas 
at Chichen Itza, and was probably erected within a few 
years of that building—that is, during the Maya renaissance 
between 1000 and 1200 A.D. 

We slept in the open during our stay at Kabah, without 
even a mosquito net, and though on one occasion I was 
annoyed by a vampire bat hovering around my head, none 
of us were attacked by these pests while asleep. 

These are, from the explorers’ point of view, thoroughly 
delightful ruins to visit, as there are neither mosquitoes by 
night nor ticks by day to annoy one. The great drawback 
is the lack of water, for the nearest supply is three miles 
away, and has to be brought in on the back of an Indian, 
who received four dollars gold per day, and refused to make 
more than a single trip daily, carrying quite a small water- 
jar. We had to dispense with personal ablutions entirely, 
and towards the end of our stay it got to be a question of 
washing the plates or going without tea; but the plates 
seemed to do very nicely with a scour from a palm leaf, 
supplemented by a polish from a piece of newspaper, 
whereas tea, after our exertions in the sun, was absolutely 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 243 


indispensable. We were greatly puzzled as to how the 
ancient inhabitants, who must have been numbered by 
tens of thousands, obtained their water-supply, till we 
observed in the stone-paved courts, in front of some of the 
temples, openings nearly blocked up, leading to large, 
cement-lined, subterraneous water cisterns beneath the 
courtyards, the drainage from which must have filled them 
very rapidly. 


CHAPTER XYi 


Visit to Uxmal, the City of the Tutul Xiu—The Casa del Gobernador— 
We Take Up our Abode on the Uppermost Terrace—A Romantic 
Spot—Mausoleum of the former Kings of Uxmal—Graffiti on one of 
the Walls—Removal of the Sapodilla Lintels from the Casa del 
Gobernador—The House of the Dwarf—Uxmal Visited by Padre 
Cogolludo—The Ruins Still Venerated by Modern Indians—Casa de 
las Monjas—Description of the Building—lInscription in One of the 
Rooms—Painted and Dated Capstone—Other Capstones on which 
We Could Not Read the Dates—Stele with Time Count Engraved 
upon It—The Ball Court—Inscribed Rings—Probably Record the 
Shifting of the Month Coefficient by One Day—Accounts of the 
Unhealthiness of the Ruins Not Justified—Held’s Unpleasant Job 
of Copying the Capstones—Visit from Indian Pilgrims—Two Pretty 
Girls—An Aboriginal American Royal Family—End of our Work in 
Yucatan—What We had Accomplished During the Trip. 


On Friday, the 22nd, we returned to Tabi, where we spent 
the night, proceeding next day by an excellent road to the 
ruins of Uxmal. This, owing to its proximity to Merida, 
and the facility of reaching it, is probably the best known 
and most frequently visited ruined city in Yucatan. In the 
number of its buildings, the beauty of its architecture and 
sculpture, and the area which it covers, it is second only to 
Chichen Itza. It was the capital city of the Tutul Xiu, a 
branch of the Maya, and from 1000 to 1200 A.D. formed, 
with Chichen Itza and Mayapan, the third member of the 
Triple Alliance. After the conquest of Mayapan its inhabi- 
tants, for some unknown reason, deserted it en masse, and 
retired to the insignificant provincial city of Mani, never 
again returning to the magnificent palaces, temples, and 
public buildings which must have cost them such a tremen- 
dous outlay in time and labour. 

On arriving at the ruins we took up our quarters in the 

244 





Roath CADE OF ONE OF THE MAIN TEMPLE. 





UXMAL : WEST RANGE OF MONJAS. 





UXMAL : MONJAS LOOKING TOWARDS CASA DEL ADIVINO, WHICH 
IS SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND. 


[p. 250 


— oo 





IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 245 


building known as the Casa del Gobernador, or House of the 
Governor, one of the finest aboriginal buildings on the 
American continent. The structure itself is 322ft. long by 
39ft. broad. It contains twenty-four rooms in all, which are 
divided by a wall running the whole length of the building 
into a front and back range. The front facade is divided 
into an upper and lower zone by a projecting cornice, the 
lower being quite plain, the upper most elaborately decorated 
by complicated sculptural devices, amongst which are seen 
the head of the long-nosed god, seated human figures, 
probably rulers or high priests of the city, geometrical 
devices, together with a band of glyphs representing 
constellations over the main doorway. There are eleven 
doorways in this facade opening into the front range of 
rooms, the back rooms being reached by doors opening from 
the front range or from the sides, as the back wall is quite 
plain and undecorated, and possesses no doorways. The 
rooms are ceiled by the corbel arch, and the roof is 
flat. 

This building stands upon the topmost of three great 
stone terraces, the lowest 575ft. long and 3ft. high, the 
second 545ft. long and 2oft. high, and the uppermost, upon 
which the building stands, 365ft. long by roft. high. The 
first terrace is approached from the ground level by an 
inclined plane, while the third terrace is approached from 
the second by a broad stone stairway, on the side opposite 

the inclined plane. 

_ We spread our cots on the uppermost terrace, and took up 
our residence here during our three-day sojourn at the ruins. 
It afforded a cool and airy lodging, free from bush and its 
attendant ticks and red bug, while the open doors of the 
palace rooms presented a desirable retreat in case of rain, and 
a magnificent view over the whole of the ruined city was 
always before our eyes from this lofty perch. 

We often sat up long into the night discussing our day’s 
work and discoveries, entranced by the spectacle spread out 
before us, bathed in a flood of tropical moonlight, the grey 


246 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


ruins standing out ghostlike from the darker background of 
shadowy, mysterious bush, and the dead silence of the night 
broken only by the murmur of our own hushed voices, 
the mournful note of the nightjar, or the distant 
scream of a jaguar seeking his supper in the surrounding 
forest. 

A short time before coming to Yucatan I had purchased 
two magnificent stucco heads, painted red, white, and black 
in the devices used by the aborigines to decorate their faces, 
upon which were modelled the ear, nose, lip, and forehead 
ornaments used by them. These were taken from a vault 
below the floor of one of the back chambers of the Casa del 
Gobernador, and probably represented the king of the 
city and his queen, who had been buried there, as they 
were undoubtedly intended as portraits of a man and 
a woman. We saw the closed-in opening of this vault, and 
it seems probable that each of the other rooms contains 
beneath it a sepulchral chamber, in which are interred the 
remains of a king or high priest, with his jewels and orna- 
ments, accompanied by his life-sized statue, showing his 
official dress moulded in stucco, and painted in the original 
colours, for the two heads which I purchased were said to have 
been broken from statues of this descripton. This opened up 
wonderful possibilities in the excavation of the floors of the 
chambers, though the fate of the original explorer was 
not encouraging, as we heard that he had been fined 5,000 
Mexican dollars for his pains, and the guardians of the ruins, 
who are always in evidence, keep an uncommonly close watch 
on all strangers visiting them. 

Seated over the actual burial-places of the former kings 
and priests of the city, we could, on these hushed moonlit 
nights, almost visualise life as it was lived there some eight 
or nine centuries ago, for the palace dated back to the days 
of the Triple Alliance. We saw again the stately houses 
of the nobles restored to their pristine magnificence by the 
dim light of the moon, gorgeously attired men and beautiful 
women moving about in the stone courtyards. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 247 


The great Temple of the Adivino, perched just opposite to 
us on its lofty pyramid, a procession of white-robed priests 
leading a sacrificial victim up the steep terraced sides, 
while packed thousands of the common people pressed 
around the base, waiting for the headless body to be rolled 
down the stairway to them; these same commons toiling 
and sweating under the scorching sun, all day and every day, 
on the erection of the vast palaces and temples, and to 
supply the wants of the caciques and priests who ruled them 
with the iron rod of superstition; the courtyard of the 
monastery, which lay just beneath us, full of grave monks 
and minor priests, occupied with their daily devotions and 
sacrifices, the painting of their religious and astronomical 
manuscripts, and probably the treatment of the sick ; and 
lastly the Halach Uinic, or king himself, almost a god to his 
people, palanquin borne, surrounded by a richly dressed 
throng of minor chiefs and soldiers ascending by the great 
stairway to his palace, now occupied by three members of an 
alien race. These visions invariably faded as the moon- 
beams which induced them gave place to the chilly wind of 
early dawn, reminding us that it was long past time for 
sleep if we were to do any work that day. 

In one of the front rooms, deeply scratched on the plaster 
of the front wall, we found Maya graffiti, one of which is 
shown in the illustration. The ear-plugs, elaborate feather 
headdress, and sandals, are all typically Maya, and it was 
probably the work of some Indian during the sixteenth or 
seventeenth centuries, as we know from the Padre Cogolludo 
that for at least a century after the conquest they were in the 
habit of returning secretly to Uxmal to burn incense to and 
worship their ancient gods. If only the artist who drew 
these graffiti had taken the trouble to write beneath them 
the current katun and calendar round date, as well as the 
date in our era, with all of which he must have been quite 
familiar, what a vast amount of controversy he would have 
saved amongst Maya archeologists. 

The lintels of these doors were originally of sapodilla 


248 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


wood, but have unfortunately all been removed within the 
last century, after withstanding for nearly 1,000 years the 
climate of Yucatan, so destructive to all woody material. 
Their removal has caused many of the doorways to partly 
fall in, and has hastened the decay of the ruins by centuries. 
Here again Stephens was the chief offender, as he shamelessly 
admits having removed the only carved sapodilla lintel 
from Uxmal for transport to the U.S.A., where it met with 
the same fate as the Kabah wood carving, and was destroyed 
by fire. 

The Casa del Adivino, or House of the Diviner, sometimes 
known as the House of the Dwarf, stands upon a great 
stone-faced pyramid 88ft. high, and measuring 235ft. by 
155{ft. at the base. The house or temple itself is long and 
narrow, 72{t. in length by only 12ft. in breadth, and is 
divided into three small rooms, which do not communicate 
with each other. The outside is badly ruined, but still 
retains a facade elaborately ornamented by complicated 
stone sculptures, chiefly geometrical in character. 

The temple is surrounded by a platform 5ft. wide, 
approached on the east side, from the ground, by a great 
stone stairway 7oft. wide, containing ninety narrow, high 
steps. On the west side, the one shown in the illustration, 
6oft. up the side of the mound, a door opens upon a stone 
step leading to a small two-roomed temple, quite un- 
decorated. This is approached by a flight of stone stairs 
from the ground level, which are now completely in ruins. 
They were supported upon a great corbel arch resting 
against the side of the sub-structure, and, when whole, must 
have presented a very imposing appearance. 

Padre Cogolludo visited Uxmal one hundred years after 
its conquest, and ascended the House of the Dwarf by the 
great stairway on its eastern side, where he says that “‘ on 
attempting to descend, his sight failed him and he was in 
some danger.” He states that in the rooms of the temple 
still remained the idols of the Indians, and that he found 
offerings of cacao and copal incense which had been made 


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IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 249 


to them quite recently. The ruins of Uxmal appear to have 
been resorted to by the Indians, for the purpose of sacrificing 
to their ancient deities, up to a recent date, and even now 
the “‘ Noh nah ti Uxmal,’” or ancient houses of Uxmal, are 
invoked in one of the prayers of the Cha Chac ceremony, as 
carried out by the modern Indians when sacrificing to the 
chacs, or gods of fertility, in order to ensure a fruitful maize 
harvest. 

The Casa de las Monjas, or Nuns’ House, was probably 
originally a monastic institution. It consists of a great 
quadrangular range of buildings surrounding a stone-paved 
courtyard, measuring 258ft. by 214ft., which is entered by a 
very fine corbel arch 16ft. 8in. wide. The inner facades of 
the building towards the courtyard are elaborately decorated 
above the cornices by stone sculpture, the face of the long- 
nosed god being, as usual, a very prominent decorative 
motif. Each of the four buildings surrounding the court- 
yard contains a front and back range of rooms, all roofed by 
the Maya arch. These apartments, which open on to the 
courtyard, are almost exactly alike in size and shape, and 
number eighty-eight in all. Upon the plaster in one of 
them we found written this inscription, in Spanish. 


Mi espiritu contemplando 
De esas ruinas la hermosura 
Las admiro con ternura 
Y las dejo suspirando 
— Manuel Gomez. 


Literally translated, this runs : 


“My soul contemplating the beauty of these ruins, I 
admire them, and leave them with a sigh.” 


A delightful sentiment, and not badly expressed, O Manuel, 
but it is the visitor who does the sighing when he contem- 
plates the virgin white wall of the chamber defaced by a daub 
of large black painted letters, no matter how appropriate the 
sentiment they record. 


In the north-east room of the quadrangle we discovered a 
RL 


250 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


capstone with the date 5 Imix, 19 Kankin, occurring in 
Tun 18, Katun 13, painted upon it, which corresponds with the 
Initial Series date II.12.17.1I.1., or to I21Q A.D. in our era. 
This capstone occupied the central position in the corbel 
arch which formed the ceiling of the room. In some 
instances we found that the image of the god to whom the 
temple was dedicated had been painted upon the capstone, 
together with the date of its erection. In most cases these 
paintings, which were executed in red, blue, green, black, 
and white, had become almost obliterated by damp, and 
were quite illegible, but where this had not occurred they 
fixed the date of the erection of the building containing them 
with absolute accuracy. We found several more painted 
capstones in the ruins of the Monjas; on all of these, — 
however, the dates were too much defaced to admit of our 
reading them. 

It will be observed that this temple was erected at the 
very end of the Great Period of the New Empire, just about 
the time, in fact, when the Triple Alliance between Chichen 
Itza, Mayapan, and Uxmal was broken up, and before 
Mexican influence had had time to be generally felt. On 
the north side of the quadrangle we unearthed from a heap 
of rubbish the face of a stele, with four glyphs, each possessing 
numerical coefficients and evidently recording a date, 
engraved upon it. This is shown in the illustration, but the 
glyphs were unfortunately too much weathered by their long 
exposure to be deciphered. 

Between the Monjas and the Casa del Gobernador the 
ruins of the Uxmal Ball Court are found. These are much 
smaller and less elaborate than the one at Chichen Itza, 
measuring only 128ft. by 7oft. The remains of two great 
stone rings 4ft. in diameter, fixed in the walls by tenons 
exactly opposite to each other, are still im situ. The outer 
portions of these rings have been broken away, apparently 
wantonly, and, though we searched very carefully in the 
great pile of rubbish beneath each of them, we were able to 
recover only a few of the missing fragments. 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 251 


Sculptured on the north surface of each ring is a 
period ending date, and these we were fortunately able 
to make out, as enough of the inscription remains to 
make its meaning perfectly clear. It reads 10 Imix (the 
Io being the head variant for that number) 17 Pop, in 
Tun 17, ending in a day r2 Ahau, which corresponds 
to the Initial Series date II.15.16.12.14., or 1277 A.D. 
On one ring the date is written 10 Imix, 17 Pop, and 
on the other ro Imix, 16 Pop. We know from the 
Maya records that at some period between the Old 
Empire and the books of Chilam Balaam the month 
coefficient was shifted back one day; thus Imix, which 
occupied the seventeenth place in the month during the 
Old Empire, in the books of Chilam Balaam occupies the 
16th; and it is not improbable that this very important 
inscription records the date of this change. The date 
1277 A.D. was approximately seventy years after the break- 
up of the Triple Alliance, and the Mexican mercenaries had 
already been for that period in Yucatan—long enough, 
evidently, to introduce the purely Aztec game of ball to the 
inhabitants of Uxmal, though one does not, as at Chichen 
Itza, find other evidence of their presence, in the form of 
Chacmools, serpent columns, and Atlantean figures, and the 
probabilities are that, except so far as the game of ball was 
concerned, the people of Uxmal came but little under their 
influence. 

Our discoveries in Uxmal had more than realised our 
most sanguine expectations, in a city where no date had 
ever previously been discovered, and to the ruins of which 
an immense antiquity, amounting sometimes to thousands 
of years, had been ascribed, we were able to fix the date 
of at least two of the most important buildings—the Monjas 
and the Ball Court—in their correct position in Maya 
chronology and in the Christian era. 

We had received many warnings as to the unhealthiness 
of the ruins, the prevalence there of malignant types of 
malaria and dysentery, and the plague of mosquitoes ; but, 


252 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


as a matter of fact, our stay there was one of our pleasantest 
experiences in Yucatan. The weather was dry and warm, 
and mosquitoes were conspicuous by their absence, while 
never once did we have to retire under a roof for either 
cooking, eating, or sleeping. The cuidador, or Government 
guardian of the ruins, followed us about everywhere we went 
at first, but, realising at length that we were really what we 
gave ourselves out to be—merely crazy gringoes, wasting 
precious hours in sketching, photographing, and copying 
inscriptions—he soon left us entirely to our own devices. 

Held, who was always complaining that when a job 
involving anything like real work turned up he was invariably 
the goat, actually had this woeful plaint justified at Uxmal ; 
for we had to erect an exceedingly tottery and insecure 
scaffolding beneath each of the painted capstones, upon 
which he had to li flat on his back gazing upwards at the 
roof, while he made an exact reproduction of the painting 
and glyphs, with every probability of being precipitated 
to the stone floor, 15ft. beneath, if he indulged in even the 
most circumspect movement to relieve the constraint of his 
position. 

During the second day of our stay at the ruins, a party 
of Indians of all ages and both sexes came from the large 
Maya village of Muna, on a pilgrimage to a shrine near the 
ruins, where the santo possesses a considerable local reputa- 
tion for healing the sick and granting the petitions of his 
devotees. They were greatly interested in our camping outfit 
especially the culinary part of it, and stood round in an 
admiring circle watching Muddy prepare our lunch, 
exchanging light badinage with us meanwhile in Maya, about 
one word in five of which we understood. 

They were nearly all of the usual Maya type—long black 
hair, dark eyes, and olive complexions—but two of the girls, 
each aged about sixteen, presented such a remarkable 
contrast the one to the other as to fix our attention 
almost exclusively on them. The one was pure Maya, with 
large brown, expressive eyes, long black lustrous hair, 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 253 


straight, well-formed nose, rather prominent red lips, and 
exquisite light olive complexion ; while the other, with blue 
eyes and ropes of yellow hair hanging down her back, might 
well have passed for a Norwegian and, indeed, was 
probably athrow-back to some Norse, buccaneer ancestor, 
who tired of his roving life, had settled amongst the 
Indians a couple of centuries or so previously. 

These two young ladies were by no means shy, and their 
comments on us in Maya—which perhaps it was as well we 
could not understand—were a source of pure joy to the other 
members of their party. Muddy was the only one of our 
party who had a really comprehensive knowledge of collo- 
quial Maya, and I noticed that even he could not refrain from 
snickering at some of their essays, though he refused to 
translate, saying they were merely Maya jokes which did not 
bear translation into English. They so far honoured us as 
to try some of our canned peaches and apricots—which 
they liked—and sardines and cheese—which they didn’t— 
and spent a good part of the afternoon with us, their 
dazzling smiles, pretty faces, engaging manners, and broken 
Spanish amply rewarding us for their earlier criticisms. 
Both were barefooted, and skipped about like deer amongst 
the sharp broken stones of the ruins, and, though they had 
never worn shoes, their feet were not only beautifully 
formed, but small and high-arched, which is most unusual in 
those who have gone barefooted from infancy. 

Uxmal was our last ruined city, and we left it with real 
regret, for on returning to Merida our two months’ trip 
would be over. I should have to return to Belize in the 
Lilian Y, while Morley and Held continued on to the ruins 
of Palenque, in the State of Chiapas. 

As before stated, the Tutul Xiu were the ruling family in 
Uxmal from the date of its foundation till it was deserted for 
the new capital at Mani. About two generations ago the 
last few surviving members of this once great family—the 
only aboriginal American royal family now in existence— 
removed from Mani to Oxcutzcab, where two descendants 


254 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 


in the direct line still live, and were visited by Morley, who 
procured from them the following genealogical tree : 


GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE XIU FROM 1790 
Anares Xiu—Antonia Us 


b. abb. 1790 
Buenaventura Xiu—Francisca Baezu 
b. abb. 1815 
Bernabe Xiu—Maria Quijada Anselmo Xiu 
1839—I9I11 d. a child of 2. 
I 2 3 4 
Jacinto Xiu—Calalina Ildefonso Xiu—Alvina Gerardo—Natividad 
1860 Chulim 1861—I9II Perez Xiu Chulim 
Bernabe Xiu Nemensio Xiu—Edwarda Mis Marcellino—Isidra 
d. a child Xiu Cocom 
Dionsio Xiu Marcellino Xiu 
a child of 3 a child of 2 
in 1918 in 1898 


Roberto Xiu 
d. in rg11 at 
25 unmarried 
Devero Xiu—Romana Uman Bonafacio Xiu 
boy of 12 in 
1918 


From Bernabe Xiu (1839-1911) the chronicle of 
Oxcutzcab, which is now in the Peabody Museum, was 
obtained. It is a record of the Xiu family as far back 
as 1600 A.D., when Gaspar Antonio Xiu was interpreter 
under the Spanish Crown. He was a son of Ah Kin Xiu, 
and grandson of Francisco Montejo Xiu, who offered his 
allegiance to Montejo, the Spanish Conqueror of Yucatan, 
at Meridain 1541. This Francisco Montejo Xiu was a direct 
descendant of the Tutul Xiu who, coming into the peninsula 
from the West, first founded the city of Uxmal, and with his 
people populated the western part of the Yucatan. 

We reached Merida on the 25th, and Progreso on the 
following day ; at which port I boarded the Lilian Y, while 
Morley and Held set out a few days later for Chiapas and 
Tabasco. 

From an archeological point of view our expedition had 
been extremely successful. We had discovered one large new 
ruined city at Chacmool, and two minor sites at Cancuen and 
Playa Carmen. We had elucidated the method of dating in 
use in Yucatan, and discovered the meaning of the winged 


IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 255 


Cauac sign, the key of the problem ; while we had deciphered 
at least thirteen new dates, extending over a period of 800 
years, from 619 to 1438, and practically covering the whole 
occupancy of the peninsula by the Maya tribes from the 
earliest immigration to within 100 years of the Spanish 
conquest. The annexed table drawn up by Morley gives 
the city and building in which each date was found, the 
date as actually recorded, and its position in the Initial 
Series and in Christian chronology. 


To, 


II. 


If. 


256 IN AN UNKNOWN LAND 
NEW CHRONOLOGICAL MATERIAL FROM YUCATAN, MEXICO 
Site Building Record Maya Era Christian 
Era @ 
Cave of 3 Ahau I2.1.0.0.0 3 Ahaur8 Kayab 1379 A.D. 
Loltun or 11.8.0.0.0 3 Ahau 18 Chen II23 A.D. 
Uxmal Ball 1o Ix 17 Pop II.15.16.12.14 10Ix17 Pop 1277A4.D. 
Court in Tun 17 
ending on 
the day 13 
Ahau 
Uxmal Mon. Quad. 5 Imix 19 II.12.17.11,.2 6 [mx I2I9Q A.D. 
West Kankin in 19 Kankin 
Range. Tun 18 of 
North Katun 13. 
Room. 
Holactun Temple Tun 13, 2 10.9.13.0.0 2 Ahau 8 Uo 761 A.D. 
of the Ahau or I1.2.13.0.0 2 Ahau 8 Yax IOI7 A.D. 
Lo. 10.9.8.4.9 10.9.8.4.9 7 Muluc1r7 Kankin 756a.pD. 
47. Muluc or 11.2.8.4.9 7 Muluc 17 Tzec IOI2 A.D. 
11.2.8.4.9. : 
7. Muluc 
Mayapan Stele 9 Katun 10 12.4.0.0.0 ro Ahau 18 Uo 1438 A.D. 
Ahau 
Mayapan Stele 8 13 Ahau, Tun I1.3.13.0.0 13 Ahau 1 Mac 1037 A.D. 
13 or I1.16.13.0.0 13 Ahau 3 Zip I293 A.D. 
Chichen Temple g Eznab 11 13.7.12.16.18 g Ezmabrzr Yax I1I07 A.D. 
Itza of Two Yax in Tun 
Lintels. rs. 
Chichen Temple Tun 10 10.2.10.0.0 2 Ahau 13 Chen 620 A.D. 
Itza of the ending on 10.2.9.1.9 9 Muluc 7 Zac 619 A.D, 
to day 2 Ahau 
10.1.9.1.9. 
9 Muluc 7 Zac 
Chichen High 2 Ahau 18 I1.19.11.0.0 2 Ahau18 Xul 1350A.D, 
Itza Priests Xul, Tun 11 
Grave 2 Ahau 
Chichen Painted 1 Ahau, Tun 13 112.2.13.0.0 rAhaur8Ceh  I4IIA.D. 
Itza Lintel 
from 
Temple 
of the 
Owl. 
Tuluum Stele 9.6.10.0.0. 9.6.10.0.0 8 Ahau 13 Pax 304 A.D, 
8 Ahau 13 
Pax, end of 10.6.10.0.0 7 Ahau 18 Yaxkin 699 A.D. 
a lahuntun 


7 Ahau 





INDEX 


A 


Acumal, village near Tuluum, 41 

Aguilar, Geronimo, connection of, 
with Cortez, 139-41 

Ah Moo Chel, priest of Mayapan, 99 

Ah Puch, Maya god of death, 128-9 

Alcohol, effect on Indian tempera- 
ment of, 49 

Alfredo, Honduranian engineer of 
the party, 20; unpleasant ex- 
perience of, 130-1. 

Alvarado, holds an auto da fé at 
Isla de las Mujeres, 143 

Alvarado, General, damage done in 
Merida by soldiers of, 173 

Ambergris Cay, people of, 21 

Anamix Chel, Lord of the Cheles, 
165 

Ants, a scourge in Yucatan, 210 

Ascension, ruins of, 27 

Ascension Bay, tiger tracks follow- 
ing racoon, 73-4; a sporting 
paradise—fish, game, and birds 
of—valuable logs driven into, 


74-5 
B 


Bacalar, Spaniards in, 15; colon- 
ised by Maya, 92, 95-6 
Belize, foundation and history of, 
13 et seq., starting place of ex- 
peditions—mixed population 
of, 13-4; logwood in, 14; 
Spanish trade, 14-5 

Benque Viego, Indian village, 54 


Blacadores Cay, Lilian Y, grounds 
XE PX 

Boca Iglesias, difficulties of landing 
at ancient church, 156—60 

Boca Paila, described, 62 

Bravo General, reconquest of town 
of Santa Cruz by, 30-1 

British Honduras, small settlers in, 
16-7 

Buccaneers, in Belize, 14-5 


Cc 


Cacicazgos, divisions of Yucatan, 
99-100 

Calendar, of the Maya, 112 e¢ seq. 

Campeché, history and description 
of, 192-4; natives of, com- 
pared with Yucatanese, 198 

Canché Balaam, ruined shrine, 
24-5 

Cancuen, island, 142; described— 
buildings—a native iconoclast, 
ruin in, 148 ef seq. 

Candelario, Mrs., 191-2 

Candelario, Sefior, 182, 191-2 

Canules, Toltec tribe, 99 

Caribs, in Belize, 14 

Carnegie Institute, 13, 20, 89 

Carranza, damage done in Merida 
by soldiers, of 173 

Castillo, the temple of Tuluum, de- 
scribed, 108-10; Initial series 
date on stele at, 120 ef seq.; 
correspondence of, with temple 
at Chacmool, 131-2 

Catoche, Cape, 156 


257 


258 

Cauac sign, meaning of, discovered, 
254-5 

Central, town, platforms and 


cisterns at, 38-9 
Central America, theory of climatic 
changes in, 94 


Cerro Cuyo, brisk commerce at, 
162-3 

Cha Chac ceremony, described, 
55-8 


Chacmool, 80 e¢ seqg.; human sac- 
rifices in, 85-7; name—ruins 
of, described, 101; buildings 
of, 131-2 

Chac-Xib-Chac, quarrels with King 
of Mayapan, 97-8 

Champoton, occupation of, by 
Itzar,96; described—report of 
German spies at, 196; re- 
markable escape of Chiclero 
boy at, 196-7 

Chanes, the, a branch of the Maya, 
95-6; change their name to 
Itzar, 100 

Chichen Itza, 92, 95-6, I21, 189; 
serpent columns at, 109; 
legend of buried treasure, 209 ; 
“Casa de Monjas,” 210-11; 


the Akatzib, 211-2 ; the 
Caracol, 212; Chichanchob, 
212-3; High Priest’s Grave, 


213-5; the Ball Court, 215-7 ; 
Casa del Tigres, 217-8; the 
Castillo, 218-20; the “‘ Group 
of a Thousand Columns,” 
220; the Cenote of Sacrifice, 
221-4; derivation of name of 
—sacred character of, 221; 
young girls sacrificed in, 221- 
3; discoveries in smaller 
temples of, 226 et seg.; an 
indication of phallic worship— 
probable population of, 228; 
insect pests, 229-30 
Chicleros, described, 28-30 


INDEX 


Chilam Balam, 88 ; Maya historical 
records, 118-9 ; Chronology of, 
203-4 

Chronology of the Maya, 113 eé¢ seq. 

Chunyancha Indians, a branch of 
the Maya, 62 

Cochua, Desiderio, 59, 62, 133; 
commands army of General 
Mai, 39, 41 

Cocom Cat, a member of the 
Cocom family, 99 

Cocomes, the ruling family of 
Mayapan, 98-9; 205-6 

Cogolludo, Abbé, on Maya customs, 
I4I1; on progress of the 
Spaniards in Yucatan, 165; 
his Historia de Yucatan, 173-4, 
199-200 

Coloradillos, insect pest in Yucatan, 
69 

Conquistadores, the, 30-1; 68-9; 
100; witness human sacrifices 
to Indian gods, 132 

Copan, discovery of early Maya 
stele at, 9I 

Cortez, incident in life of, 64-9; 
his Conquistadores, 132; at 
island of Cozumel, 139-41 ; 
at ‘“‘ Isle de las Mujeres,’’ 143 

Cozumel, island, Neo-Mexican 
culture in, 62 et seq. ; Cortezin, 
65, 139-41 ; salubrity of, 71-2 

Cross, the, an emblem of Maya 
worship, 91 

Cuculcan, Maya god, 87; apotheo- 
sis of, 97; meaning of name, 
127-8; how represented in 
stele, 203 

Culebra Cays, life at, 26 

Cupules, Maya tribe, 99-100 


D 
Diaz, Bernal, incident in life of 


Cortez, related by, 64-9; with 
expedition of Cortez, 143 


INDEX 


Diaz, Padre Juan, with conquista- 
dores in Cozumel, 66; _ his 
diary, 105 

Dogs in Yucatecan villages, 64 

Dresden, Codex, Maya paintings 
and hieroglyphs in, 129-30 

Dzibalché, Indian town, described : 
Ford cars in, prohibition in, 
182; strange sleeping-place 
in, 190; incident in church at, 
192-3 

E 


Ek Ahau, Maya war diety, 130 

El Meco, Espiritu Santo Bay, 
Maya temple at, described, 
153-5; described, 23 

Esquivel, Amado, v. ‘‘ Muddy ”’ 


F 


Flores, record of first Katun at, 93 
Ford motor-car, much used in 
Yucatan, 182 


G 


Garcia, Sefior Sixto, 183 

George, 20, 2I, 110 

Gomez, Manuel, verses on ruin of 
Uxmal, by, 249 

Grijalva, Juan de, discovers Cozu- 
mel, 67-8; voyage of, to 
coast of Yucatan, 105; chap- 
lain of, on Tuluum, 134; at 
“Isla de las Mujeres ” in 1517, 
143 

Guatemala, Maya established in, 
gi ; earthquake in city of, 91-2 

Guerrero, Gonzalo, apostasy of, 140 


H 
Held, John, 19, 20, 200; abilities 


of, as a caricaturist, 64; his 
unspeakable gramophone, 103 ; 


259 


visits the Castillo, 108 e¢ seq., 
reproduces paintings and 
glyphs in Uxmal, 252 

Henequen, or sisal fibre: exported 
from Silan, 163-4 ; importance 
of trade in—how the aloe 
plants are treated, 202 

Herrera, on progress of Spaniards 
in Yucatan, 165; on Mexican 
games, 215-7 

Holbox, Indian settlement, 160-1 

Honduras, Maya established in 
first century in Western, 91 

Howe, Dr., visits Tuluum, 106-7; 
leaves remarkable monolith at 
Castillo, 111-2 

Hubert, 18; a spoiler of food, 78 ; 
his cookery, 102-3; disrated 
as cook, III 

Hunnac Ceel, King of Mayapan, 
97-8 

I 


Icaiche Indians, their chief, subsi- 
dised by Mexican Government, 
44 

Independencia, wreck of the, 61 

Insect pests, of Yucatan, 70-1 

International Harvester Co., 
business done by, in Silan, 163 

“Isla de las Mujeres,’’ origin of 
name—treception by inhabi- 
tants of—Maya ruins in, 142 
et seq. 

Itzamna, 87, 95; apotheosis of, 
97; priest-chief of Maya, 121 ; 
god of Yucatan, 127 

Itzas, the, their place in Maya New 
Empire, 95 et. seq., alliance of, 
with Uxmal and Mayapan, 
96-7 

K 


Kabak, ruins of—glyphs and pyra- 
mids of, 238-43 
Kanchacan, visit to, 204-5 


260 


L 


Laffite, pirate, 167 

Lakin Chan, Maya priest and 
leader, 95 

Landa, Bishop, on Maya customs, 
141; history dealing with 
MSS. of the aborigines, 174 ; 
tradition handed down by, 222 

Lilian Y., sloop, 18 et seq., 21, 41, 
61, 73, 102; customs difficul- 
ties in regard to, 195-6 

Logwood, cutting of, near Belize, 14 

Loltun, cave, described—petro- 
glyphs in, 233-6 


M 


Mahogany, cutting of, in Honduras, 
16 

Mai, General, chief of Santa Cruz 
Indians, 29, 39-41 

Marriage amongst the mahogany- 
cutters of Honduras, 16 

Martin, Don Julio, his story of an 
ancient Maya shrine, 37-8 

Martin and Martinez, Messrs., 29, 
30, 61 

Martinez, Don Juan, his unique 


knowledge of the ancient 
Maya, 179-81 

Maya, the, civilisation of, 13, 25; 
history of, 30-1, 87, 90; 


tombs and shrines of, 36-8; 
theories regarding disruption 
of the old Empire of the, 94-5 ; 
105; architecture of, 25, 39; 
79; temples described, 78-88, 
calendars and chronology of, 
89, 112 et seg.; monoliths 
described, 91 e¢ seq.; old and 
new Empires of, 92, 95 et seq. ; 
language of, 101, 138; effect 
of foreign religions on tempera- 
ment of, 126-7; sleeping 
powers of natives, I9I ; women 
of, 201-2, 252-3 


INDEX 


Mayapan, conquest of, 25-6, 99; 
alliances formed by, 96-7, Io1, 
189, 205-6; wall of, 123-4; 
discovery of interesting stele 
from ruins of, 202-3; destruc- 
tion of, 206 

Mechorego, interpreter to Cortez, 
65-6 

Merida, described—expulsion of 
padres from, 173; buildings 
and people of, 175-6; prohi- 
bition in, 176; knowledge of 
Spanish and Maya in, 177; 
millionaires in, 180—1 

Mestisada, the, Spanish dance 
described, 47 

Mexico, 25, 91 

Monolith, discovery of, at Castillo, 
I1I-2 

Montejo, Francisco, 165, 169, 224-5 

Montezuma, 132 

Morales, Carlos Castro, Governor 
of Yucatan, ability of, religious 
convictions, 178% official 
assistance given by, 179 

Morley, Dr. Sylvanus G., 13, 19, 
23, 60, 72, 74, 302, 38G,. 795, 
184; on Maya history, 89 et 
seg.; discovery of earliest 
dated Maya stele by, 92; 
visits ruins of Tuluum, 106; 
at the temple of Castillo, 110 
et seq. ; personal characteristics 
of, 136; chronological table 
drawn up by, 256 

Muddy, 20, 23, 110-1 ; fluent know- 
ledge of Maya language, 137; 
trouble with Customs officers 
in Merida, 177 

Mules, freakish behaviour of Indian 
36, 59, 61 


N 


Nakum, important Maya centre, 92 
Napot Xiu, Maya chief, 119 


INDEX 


Naranjo, Maya city of archaic 
period, stele discovered at, 91 

Negro labour, in British Honduras, 
16 

Neo-Mexican culture, 62 e¢ seq. 

“New Yucatan,’ the, 163 

Noh Capal Peck, founds Cacicazgo 
of Ceh Peck, 99 

Nokhu, meaning of, 
language, 104 

Nusbaum, Mr., 
Tuluum, 106 


in Maya 


visits ruins of 


O 


Obeah, significance of serpent in 
mystic rites of, 131 


P 


Palenque, Maya city of First 
Empire, 91 

Parmalee, Mr., visits Tuluum, 106— 
7; leaves remarkable monolith 
at Castillo, 111-2 

Patricia, Government yacht, trip 
to Corozal in, 19 e¢ seq. 

Payo Obispo, reception at, 20 

Pec, Roman, chief of Santa Cruz 
Indians, 49 

Peon family, size of estate of, 201 

Perez, Benito, Bishop of Culhua, 
67 

Peten Itzas, last Maya stronghold, 
100 

Piedras Negras, discovery of early 
Maya stele at, 91 

Piracy in the Caribbean ‘Sea, 
17-8 

Playa Carmen, historical interest 
of ruins at, 139 et seq. 

“Poke and Go Boys,”’ in battle of 
St. George’s Cay, 15-6 

Polanco, Miguel, ruins of Maya 
city discovered by, 72; cross- 
examination of, 73 


261 


Progreso, Customs regulations at, 
I7I-2; wages and cost of 
living in, 172 

Puerto Morelos, sport and work at, 
142 


Q 


Quintana Roo, Mexican territory, 
20; national railroad of, 27-8 

Quirigua, Maya monolith discovered 
at, 91-2; initial series taken 
from ruins of, 115 e¢ seq. 


R 


Rio Lagarto, 162 
Roman Pee, v. Pec, Roman 


S 


St. George’s Cay, battle between 
Spaniards and natives at, 15-6 

San Andres Tuxtla, discovery of 
Maya statuette at, 90-1 

San Luis, Indians at, 185; Maya 
temple at, described, 185-9 

San Miguel, 62 

San Pedro, 21; fishermen of, 26 

Santa Cruz, Indians of, 27-32, 38, 
133, 135 et seg.; history of, 
30-2; butchery of Spanish 
prisoners, 33-4; diseases of, 
40-I, 50-2; characteristics of 
natives—women of, 41 e¢ seq. ; 
custom in regard to children— 
drunkenness in, 48; execu- 
tions and minor punishments, 
50; superstitions, 52 et seq.; 
gods of, 54-5 

Santa Cruz de Bravo, 
Church in, 33-4 

Seibal, important Maya centre, 92 ; 
record of first Katun at, 93 

Seiba Playa, a conchologist’s para- 
dise, 198-9 


Spanish 


262 


Silan, exports of sisal from, 163; 
gigantic mound, 163-5 ; glyphs 
of ruined temples, 166-7; 
tablets in old church in, 
167-9 

Snakes, of Yucatan, 71 

Soldier crabs, in bush at Ascension 
Bay, 76 

Solis, General Octaviano, hospitable 
reception by, 20 

Solis, Don F. J. M., historian of 
Yucatan, 181; cost of his 
Historia de la Conquista de 
Yucatan, 200 

Spinden, his theory of the disrup- 
tion of the old Maya Empire, 
94 

Stele, discovery of, by Stephens at 
Tuluum—curious history of, 
123, 

Stephens, John L., 13, 66, 200; 
visits Tuluum, 105-6; in 
Silan, 165; relations of, with 
Yucatanese clergy, 192; his 
discoveries in Kabah, 240-3 


“i 


Tabi, hacienda of, described, 236— 
8 

Tikal, discovery of Maya stele at, 
91; record of first Katun at, 
93 

Toltecs, 98-9, 215, 217 

Tuluum, description of architec- 
tural style, 25, 87; city of, 71; 
buildings of, 122 e¢ seq; 
mural paintings, 127 et seq; 
mystery of, 104 et seg, 133-4} 
human sacrifices in temples of, 
132-4 

Tutul Xiu, the, cities founded by, 
96; war of, with Cocomes, 99 ; 
ruling family in Uxmal— 
genealogy of, 253-5 


INDEX 


U 


Uaxactum, discovery of Maya 
records in, 93 

Usher, Captain, 20 

Uxmal, 96-7, 100, 189; calendar 
records in Ball Court, 118-9; 
ruins of the great temple of 
the Adovino, 245-8; the 
““Casa de las Monjas” in 
249; the Ball Court of, 
250-1 


Vv 


Vasquez, Pedro, 110-1 

Via Chica, 27-8 

““Volan Coche,’? means of trans- 
port in Yucatan, 207-8 


WwW 


‘“‘ War of the Castes,’’ Maya revolt 
against the Spaniards, 105 

Witchcraft, how punished by the 
Indians, 50 


x 


Xcalac, population of, 22-3 

Xcalumkin Savanna, ancient popu- 
lation of, 189 

Xiu, Bernabe, record of Xia family 
by, 254 

Xiu, Francisco Montejo, allegiance 
offered to Montejo by, 254 

Xiu, Gaspar Antonio, interpreter 
under Spanish Crown, 254 


24 


Yalahau, old pirate stronghold, 
described, 161-2 

Yaxchilan, Maya city of First 
Empire, 91 


INDEX 


Yucatan, 21-2, 64, 96, 199, 205, 


206, 239, 254; home of the 
Maya race, 13; conquered by 
Spaniards, 25; weapons of 
fauna and flora of, 70-1; 
racial unity of people of, 110 ; 
human sacrifices in, 132 ; com- 
pared with Ireland, 169, 232-3; 


263 


virtues and faults of people of, 


177-8; hospitality in, 
the histories of, 181; 


180 ; 
agri- 


culture in, 183; anomaly of 
the orange trade in, 183-4; 


roads in, 184; women 
bourgeois class in, 191-2 
Yzabal, Jadeite plates from, 91 


of 

















